It's perhaps appropriate that Guy N. Smith began this book with an invocation to Gwydion, the god of writers in Welsh mythology, "patron of our art and incarnate quintessence of all our faults and virtues", because Gwydion is a trickster god and it's hard to know who to root for in this book. It's not even particularly clear as to who the title refers to, because we initially believe one character fits that bill, are later told it's a different one and eventually realise that it's both.

It's as if Smith took delight in framing this story in such a way that we naturally take sides, only to realise later that we may have taken the wrong one. And by later, that could be as late as the final few chapters when Smith drops new information on us that change things. What's more, there are a few points where we don't want to take either side at all, because neither seems worthy and so we question our earlier judgement. There's realism there, because few things do really boil down neatly to a couple of distinguishable sides, but there's a little frustration there too.

Initially, it seems like the neophyte is Joby, the lead character, who is drawn sympathetically. He's six as the book starts and the son of a witch, Hilda Tarrat, who's just discovered that her husband has been having an affair. She curses Arthur, who is promptly gored by a bull called Bovril the next day, but it becomes apparent that he's knocked up his mistress too and he refuses to identify her. Hilda quickly follows Arthur to the grave because she goes into Hope Woods to plead with the Old Ones for Joby's protection. After a lightning strike burns her to a crisp, we leap forward ten years for Chapter One, with Joby now sixteen and moving out of Mrs. Clatt's house to take ownership of the Tarrat cottage.

In most books, Joby would follow his parents into the black arts. After all, that's what his mother asked for from the Old Ones, so that he can grow into power and seek revenge on the persecutors and witchfinders. Mrs. Clatt is clearly set up as Hilda Tarrat's sidekick and her vicious cat an overt familiar, so surely she trained him during her decade of guardianship so that now, at sixteen, he can claim his power and live up to what the villagers of Hope already call him: "witch-boy". Yeah, none of that happens here. Joby isn't remotely interested in being a witch and puts up with what people say about him, especially after he's involved in a string of accidents.

What seems to be the case is that, while he's the spawn of witches, he isn't a witch himself. That's Sally Ann Morris, also sixteen, the shapely daughter of Joby's employer at Sparchmoor Farm, and, you won't be too shocked to discover, his half-sister, because Arthur Tarrat's mistress turns out to be Amy Morris, Sally Ann's mother. And Sally Ann is already coming into her powers, using them a great deal to torment Joby and to trigger those accidents. He's using a billhook to pleach a hedge when she triggers it to slip out of his hand and behead young Timmy Cooper, who's watching.

And so Joby's the good guy who isn't really the neophyte of the title while Sally Ann's the bad girl who is and we're all set. Well, kinda sorta. It isn't remotely that simple and I'm not going to spoil where it goes, but I will add that it's not just about the two of them. Sure, 'The Neophyte' follows the template Smith set in 'Accursed' and continued in 'Throwback' of stretching out the story to a more substantial page count,  three hundred or so pages rather than half that, but reducing the cast of characters massively to focus closely on a very small number of them. However, even with this being almost entirely about Joby and Sally Ann, there are other characters who have a huge part in proceedings, even if they don't show up too often.

For one, there's Ally Goode, whose name is entirely appropriate. In a village where nobody wants anything to do with the witch-boy, he's the only one who honestly thinks of him as a friend. There's an initial question about whether it's Sally Ann or Ally that's attacking Joby psychically, and she's very keen to frame it that way for obvious reasons, but we know pretty quickly that it's her. What Ally does is represent the good in the village and offer a way out, at whatever point Joby can see it.

For another, there are the Old Ones, whoever or whatever they are. It seems fair to think of them as the evil dead, a general conglomeration of dead witches whose powers have coalesced into the evil that hangs out in the cupboard under the stairs in Joby's cottage. However, it may not be fair because, while Hilda Tarrat is one of them and she certainly has an agenda for Joby, she's also his mother and trying to look out for him, as epitomised by the amulet she gave him before she died that he wears around his neck for protection. So, when it comes down to psychic warfare between Sally Ann and the Old Ones, whose side are we supposed to take? We're surely on Joby's side but he's not part of that, so which is the lesser of two evils?

I do like these longer New English Library horror novels of Guy's but I can't say that any of them is up there with the best of his work in my estimation. I appreciate the more drawn-out stories, and that works especially well in 'Throwback'. I appreciate the deeper characterisations too, which set the stage for his similar-sized novels for Sphere that would begin a couple of years later, but they still leave me a little dry. I find that I see hints of earlier novels in each of them and realise that I liked how they were handled then better than now.

For instance, the curse Hilda Tarrat visits on her wayward husband Arthur in the prologue is only one curse. It seems obvious that the Old Ones cursed the village long ago and she's perpetuated that in her time, but that was so much clearer in books such as 'The Pluto Pact' and 'The Undead'. When the Tanner boys attack Joby's cottage with stones, I was reminded of the elder Wilson boys in 'The Lurkers', who seemed to be tied far closer to the story at hand, even though they weren't major characters. Even Joby's psychic persecution by both Sally Ann and the Old Ones feels like a nod back to Ray Tyler in 'Wolfcurse', whose torment was more personal because it was his nature doing it to him rather than outside forces.

What I liked here the most wasn't the sweep of the novel but many of the details, in particular a lot of the death scenes, which Smith seems to have had a lot of fun with, especially in the shorter second part of the book. That features Joby and Sally Ann outside of Hope living on the booking fees from him perfoming in pubs with his voice and guitar, tools he's long used as a means to stop the voices inside his head. While he's playing and the crowds are absorbed by his work, Sally Ann's triggering outrageous acts in the audience which prompt the shows to end, whether it's because of a fight, a suicide or a stampeding elephant. Oh yes, there's one of those here, at a festival.

I liked Joby's attempts to find a semblance of normalcy through other broken people, like Harriet Blake, a lonely part-time hooker who drops by in an attempt to find common ground. And I like an array of descriptions that betray Smith's own views on country living, like a telling one that calls suburbia "that insidious monster that gobbled up everything that was natural and beautiful, had long got out of control and gone on the rampage." This isn't a particularly quotable book, unless we're talking about how weird it is to see "afro" consistently spelled with two Fs, but I do like that one. The inclusion of pleaching, which is a traditional technique to weave hedges, is worthy too.

I don't expect a lot of these subtleties in next month's book, because it's 'Abomination', the first novel Smith wrote for Arrow, which I remember as being very much in the shorter style of earlier New English Library books. As much as I love his novels for Hamlyn, many of which were reprinted by Arrow, I've been looking forward to getting to his Arrow originals for a while, not only this one but also 'Cannibals' and 'The Island', among others. That journey begins next month! ~~ Hal C F Astell

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