This is C. J. Cooke's eighth novel, I believe, but only my second after 'A Haunting in the Arctic' last year. In my review of that book, I compared her to three other female authors who are favourites of mine at the moment, Alma Katsu, Jaime Jo Wright and Catriona Ward. These are standalones but they follow a very similar approach and I'd call out Katsu and Wright again, though there isn't as much of Ward in play this time.

The comparison to Katsu is in how Cooke writes historical horror with a vivid setting in the past. It isn't as simple as setting a story way back when. It's in making that when come alive. Here, that's the Orkney Isles in 1594, a time when the Earl is Patrick Stewart (no, not that one), who's cousin to the king, James VI, and very capable of abusing his position with that connection as a safety net. Notably, Patrick fears witches and with good reason, given that his opponents, including his very own brother, John, are happy to use witches for their own goals.

The comparison to Wright is in how Cooke writes two stories in two periods, each of which is set in the same location and led by a female character, alternating between them until the two stories gradually merge into one. Here, the times are 1594 and 2024, four hundred and thirty years apart, much more this time than Wright tends to tackle. The location is the Orkneys; specifically the Isle of Gunn and its beach at Fynhallow, both of which are fictional. And the leads are Alison Balfour and Clementine Woodbury.

Now, I'm not sure that we're given Alison's surname but the historical note at the very beginning explains that Alison Balfour was the first of over seventy women to be executed in the Orkneys for witchcraft and the Alison we're reading about is a spaewoman there with overt connections to the Triskele, supposedly the oldest magic users in the world, who's soon arrested for witchcraft, so it's hardly a leap to assume that they're one and the same.

The placement of that historical note may well be the worst thing about this book, because it robs the book of a great deal of its suspense by guaranteeing to us that Alison will be burned to death eventually. Why it wasn't placed at the end instead, I'm not sure, but maybe that inevitability was a deliberate choice by the author to frame what happens from a feminist standpoint. If we know it will come and stop seeking a way out, then maybe we'll focus more on how misogynistic and sexist the fight against witches was. I think we've collectively figured that out by now and don't need an approach like this to teach us.

Anyway, Alison is a healer, which was one step towards a witch already, in the mindset of the time, and her ties to the Triskele cement it. Her mother is a pivotal member of the group, who inducted Alison many years ago. She chose to leave it, but the first chapter set in 1594 involves her seeing a fresh induction ceremony; this time of her two children, Edward and Beatrice, manouevred into it by her mother knowingly against her will. The final step of induction is to open the ancient Book of Witching and effectively sign it by screaming into it.

Alison's husband, William, is involved in the burgeoning rebellion against the Earl of Stewart, and the latter's brother John, who wants his position not only for good reasons but to take that power for himself, specifically asks Alison for a charm that will take a life. That she refuses does not help her case, as it's John Stewart who later arrests her for witchcraft as a scapegoat after his attempt on his brother's life fails and the man responsible confesses his sins and names her during torture with cashielaws; heated iron casings to surround limbs and burn their victims into confession.

We are given Clem's surname, when the police call her with news that her daughter Erin, nineteen-years-old, is in the hospital suffering from fourth-degree burns to much of her body. She was found on the beach at Fynhallow on the Isle of Gunn, uninhabited since the 19th century after an outbreak of plague. She was there on holiday with her boyfriend, Arlo McGrath, and a mutual friend, Senna, after having traced her roots to Orkney through a DNA test. Now, Arlo's dead, Senna's missing and Erin's fighting for her life in a medically induced coma with her eyelids sewn shut for protection.

Of course, the police are investigating the case, but as yet they have little to go on. While Cooke's careful to depict them as capable people doing their jobs well, certain factors, some natural and some supernatural, lead Clem and her ex-husband Quinn, Erin's father, to travel to the Orkneys to ask questions themselves, less constrained by what could be considered rational lines of enquiry. And so the two stories start to merge, Alison's trial for witchcraft in 1594 and an attempt by Clem and Quinn to figure out what their daughter had got herself into. Both could be considered quests for truth, both inevitably end in fire and both involve the Book of Witching.

Horror novels that revolve around witches were commonplace in the UK half a century ago, as an array of publishers capitalised on the success of the black magic novels of Dennis Wheatley with a progressively more gratuitous flow of paperback originals, perhaps culminating in 'The Witches' series of eight books credited to James Darke, a pseudonym for Laurence James, with a salacious photocover on each. I presume Cooke has covered witches before with 'The Lighthouse Witches', a 2021 novel also focused on a remote Scottish island but which is apparently otherwise unrelated.

There may be further thematic links, given that this has much in common with 'A Haunting in the Arctic', even though it's a completely different story. That also told two stories that merged into one, one of them historic and one contemporary, both led by female characters with the historic one mistreated for cultural reasons and the contemporary one having much more agency. There's real history here but also a supernatural touch. And, while almost everything alternates between those two timelines, there's still an explanatory chapter outside of them that feels a little out of place but is presumably needed to tell us something crucial that we couldn't have learned in any other way. At least, the one here is less invasive than the couple last time out.

And I liked both novels a great deal. This may be the better of the two but it's also the simpler of them, without an unreliable narrator or much in the way of twists. It's also a much warmer book, the icy blue of the cover art of 'A Haunting in the Arctic' appropriately reflecting the bleakness and sheer cold of the location, which we feel through Cooke's evocative setting, and the fiery red of 'The Book of Witching' appropriately reflecting the opposite, even if we never quite feel we're on fire too. Clearly, Cooke has her formula, but she's put it to great use in these two books. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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