This month I am recommending a distinctive novel by British author Hannah Mathewson set in a magical version of London known as the Witherward. The early chapters of Wayward (2022) may resemble a Harry Potter story but this book ends in a very different place. Witherward (2021), another novel set in the same world, was published first but Wayward comes earlier in the chronology of the story. The two books, which share one leading character, seem designed to be read independently. They are both available in paperback or as ebooks. Just be sure you’ve got the right Wayward since there are several novels with this title.

Six magical groups inhabit separate areas of Mathewson’s London: Sorcerers, Changelings, Wraiths, Whisperers, Oracles and Psi. Each group has its own type of power and guards its territory with magics and militias. High Sorcerer Jupitus Fisk has ruled the Heart – the territory of the Sorcerers – for fifty years and expects to be succeeded by his daughter, Alana. This story is centered on his two grandchildren, seventeen year old Cassia and her brilliant but wayward brother, Ollivan. Cassia was sent to the territory of the Changelings when she was five years old as a fosterchild/hostage. She chose to return home as a teenager but barely got to know her rebellious brother, Ollivan, before he was permanently banished from the Witherward for the crime of murder.

Cassia is now trying to catch up on the training she should have had as a Sorcerer. Her grandfather has appointed one of his favourites, Jasper Hawkes, to teach her magic. Cassia is attracted to her handsome young tutor but the preparations for her second attempt to be initiated into the Society of Young Gifted Sorcerers are not going well. The members of this society, known as Successors, are the elite of the Heart and their elected Presidents rule over the extraordinary magical building known as the Wending Place. When Jasper sneaks her into his secret practice room in the Wending Place, Cassia discovers an enchanted talking-doll who claims to have been stolen. When the doll offers to help Cassia with her magic, Cassia names her Violet and takes her back to her grandfather’s house.

As the night of the next initiation ceremony at the Wending Place arrives, Cassia is feeling far from confident that she will be able to impress the Successors with her chosen spell. It is also the night on which a new President of the society will be elected. In front of her grandfather and all the Successors, Cassia’s spell to grow a magical rosebush does not go to plan. High Sorcerer Fisk is annoyed and disappointed but that is nothing to how furious he is when the result of the Presidential election is announced. The new President of the Society of Young Gifted Sorcerers is a write-in candidate – his detestable grandson, Ollivan. Once the election has taken place the Wending House will accept no-one else so Fisk is forced to allow Ollivan to live in the Heart again during the year of his office.

Ollivan’s return has been engineered by his two best friends among the Successors, Lev and Virgil, but even they worry about Ollivan’s character and intentions. Ollivan isn’t pleased to discover that the second most important office in the society is now held by his ambitious ex-girlfriend, Sybella Dentley. He wants to concentrate on his plans for proving his innocence of the murder charge and getting revenge on his enemies, particularly Jasper Hawkes. Strong-minded Sybella has other ideas and tries to make him into a responsible President. Meanwhile, Cassia is more determined than ever to prove that her magic is as powerful as Ollivan’s and so avoid being married off to some suitable young sorcerer. With Violet’s help, Cassia’s magic does become stronger but also terrifyingly difficult to control.

A series of bizarre and violent incidents raises the tensions between the magical groups, bringing the threat of all out war. Ollivan assembles unlikely allies to help him defy his grandfather while Cassia discovers some shocking truths about her family. Mistakes made by Ollivan and Cassia could have disastrous consequences for the whole of London. Can the two siblings resolve their differences and act together to save the city?

The era in which this story is set is unspecified but seems vaguely Victorian. We are told that it is two thousand years since the Sorcerer Empire of Callica founded the Witherward, establishing a tribal culture based on mutual mistrust. There have been frequent wars between the magical factions but now all of them have agreed to abide by a set of rules known as the Principles. You won’t get much sense of the real London from this novel but it did amuse me that my brother’s posh home district of Camden Town is inhabited by werewolves in Mathewson’s world.

The most striking building in this London is the Wending House, an ancient living wonder with a will of its own and an atmosphere like swimming through champagne. The moving floors, hidden rooms and animated portraits are all reminiscent of Hogwarts and I’m sure that is deliberate. The Wending House has a library and a programme of lectures but basically it has become a social club for young sorcerers. Early in the novel, Cassia glimpses a group of Successors drinking, joking and racing enchanted paper frogs. It all seems jolly and harmless, though it makes shy Cassia feel even more of an outsider. There are plenty of Fantasy novels in which an underdog young magician or witch, eventually triumphs over adversity and is fully accepted by their renowned school or college. Wayward doesn’t follow this pattern. By the time Cassia is powerful enough to pass the initiation into the Society of Young Gifted Sorcerers, it is a club she no longer wants to belong to. She has learned to see the Society, with its luxurious lifestyle and pointless traditions, as a way of distracting the spoiled elite of the Heart from noticing the corruption of their leadership and the grim reality of most people’s lives in the Witherward.

The six magical groups that make up the Witherward resemble a line up of popular sub-genres of Fantasy and Science Fiction. None of the groups are intrinsically evil but all of them have powers which can be and often are misused. This is not a society in which diversity is celebrated and peace between the groups is only maintained by enforced separation and a supposedly unbreakable set of rules. Cassia, who has literally been raised by wolves, is in the painful position of not being fully trusted by either the Sorcerers or the Changelings. When the enchanted doll, Violet, seems to accept her for who she is, Cassia is drawn into enabling sorcery that she doesn’t understand. Violet starts off as merely creepy but soon turns into a kind of ticking timebomb of dark magic.

There are plenty of exciting scenes of murder, mayhem and magic in Wayward but essentially this is a rather pessimistic story about family and friendship. I’ve mentioned quite a few names in the plot-summary because all of these carefully drawn characters are of vital importance to Cassia and/or Ollivan. Cassia has left behind friends and a mother-figure among the Changelings because she longs to be valued by her birth-family. Mathewson makes her heroine a not particularly likeable young woman but we can always empathise with Cassia’s situation. Cassia believes, with some justification, that she was discarded by her family because she lacked her brother’s magical brilliance. This makes her bitterly resentful towards Ollivan, even though he was only a child when she was sent away. Once back in the Heart, her powerful grandfather doesn’t hide his disdain for Cassia’s abilities or the fact that he will treat her as a pawn in his political manoeuvres. Perhaps even more painfully, Cassia’s mother patronises her and dresses her like a living doll. Cassia shouldn’t care what any of her dysfunctional family thinks of her but it is sadly plausible that she does.

Ollivan is an ambiguous and fascinating character right from the first page of this novel when we meet him deliberately getting himself fired from a shop in ordinary London. He calls himself an undisciplined liability but there is method in his madness. Ollivan’s antics at first seem merely amusing but many people, including most of his own family, view him as real threat to the stability of the Witherward. Ollivan claims to be innocent of murder but his pursuit of revenge and his reckless use of his magic soon have destructive consequences. He is a natural anarchist but his ex-girlfriend, Sybella, and his mother, Alana, both try to get Ollivan to accept the responsibilities that come with power. Alana seems to be a benign authority figure but Ollivan knows that she is fatally compromised by her failure to challenge her father’s tyrannical behaviour. As the novel discloses how the High Sorcerer is breaking and undermining The Principles, Ollivan’s contrary behaviour becomes more understandable. He has taken the stance that all orders from a corrupt authority should be disobeyed, even quite trivial ones. Yet the story also makes it clear how alike Ollivan and his grandfather are. They are both ruthless and brilliant rule-breakers. Ollivan is a hero who is always close to becoming a villain.

This is not a novel that was ever going to end with a happily reunited family. Ollivan and Cassia come to know each other better but neither of them can stay in their original home. Cassia does make new friends and learns to value old ones but some of her hopes will never be realized. There is even more underlying sadness in Ollivan’s story. He was once part of a devoted trio of friends, but when gentle Lev and stern Virgil became a happy couple, Ollivan could not help feeling excluded and lost part of his moral compass. He can also never get over the way that members of his own family have betrayed or doubted him. Although there is a reconciliation with Sybella, she and Ollivan are not the type of couple to give up the whole world for love so their futures may not lie together. This novel’s distinctive melancholy tone comes from an acceptance that in most people’s lives there are problems which cannot be solved and relationships which cannot be mended. So, if you are sick of feelgood stories which offer glib solutions to everything, Wayward may be the book for you. Until next month…

Geraldine

May 2025