Ormeshadow

I wasn't sure what to expect from this novella, since Goodreads has it tagged anywhere from straight Fantasy to Historical Fiction. What I ended up getting was delightfully unexpected – my favorite kind of book.

To manage expectations early, this is not a straight Fantasy book. Set in probably 1800s pastoral England (I'm terribly bad with actual era names), I would call this maybe Historical Fantasy. There is a dragon mentioned, but only in the context of a family legend, and no actual serpentine beasts are depicted (directly) in this book.

Young Gideon is forced to relocate with his father and mother from their life in urban Bath, England to Ormeshadow, a small farming community where Gideon's father, John, was given land by his father. They stay with John's brother, Thomas, who owns the other half of the land, and Gideon struggles to accept this new lifestyle that's so different from what he's used to. Almost immediately family drama arrives, as it does in close quarters, and the family drama does not let up throughout the book. We follow Gideon as he grows into an older teenager, there on the front lines as the family drama ebbs and flows. At about the same time Gideon discovers a dark secret he's been unaware of the entire time, a similar dark secret tears apart the whole community of Ormeshadow.

Through this we're treated with excerpts from Gideon's family story, as told by John, his father. In short form, the whole of Ormeshadow is a sleeping dragon hoarding undiscovered treasure. There's much more to it, and the whole of the family fable is really well done, but I don't want to give away any sort of clue as to where the ending goes.

The writing is very dark, brooding, perfect for the setting and the story. It very much felt like a Wuthering Heights type of vibe as noted by other reviewers here. Despite this novella being less than 200 pages, the characters and setting are very well done, believable, and fleshed out. The ending was incredibly satisfying to me, equal parts predictable and unpredictable at the same time. It's hard to pull that off well.

If any of this sounds appealing to you, give this novella a try. It's a quick read, but I walked away from it having been incredibly glad I gave it a try.