The Briar Book of the Dead by A.G. Slatter – Review

Published: February 13, 2024

Publisher: Titan Books

Series: N/A

Genre: Fantasy

Pages: 379 (Kindle)

My Rating: 4 Stars

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis:
Set in the same universe as the acclaimed All the Murmuring Bones and The Path of Thorns (one of Oprah Daily’s Top 25 Fantasy Novels of 2022), this beautifully told Gothic fairy tale of ghosts, witches, deadly secrets and past sins, will be perfect for fans of Hannah Whitten and Ava Reid.

Ellie Briar is the first non-witch to be born into her family for generations. The Briar family of witches run the town of Silverton, caring for its inhabitants with their skills and magic. In the usual scheme of things, they would be burnt for their sorcery, but the church has given them dispensation in return for their protection of the borders of the Darklands, where the much-feared Leech Lords hold sway.

Ellie is being trained as a steward, administering for the town, and warding off the insistent interest of the church. When her grandmother dies suddenly, Ellie’s cousin Audra rises to the position of Briar Witch, propelling Ellie into her new role. As she navigates fresh challenges, an unexpected new ability to see and speak to the dead leads her to uncover sinister family secrets, stories of burnings, lost grimoires and evil spells. Reeling from one revelation to the next, she seeks answers from the long dead and is forced to decide who to trust, as a devastating plot threatens to destroy everything the Briar witches have sacrificed so much to build.

Told in the award-winning author’s trademark gorgeous, addictive prose, this is an intricately woven tale of a family of witches struggling against the bonds of past sins and persecution.

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I snagged a copy of this because it both looked and sounded very cool on Goodreads. Imagine my surprise when the Goodreads synopsis turned out to be somewhat misleading/very incorrect. I thought this was going to be about a town full of witches fighting dark vampiric lords but it’s sooooo not about that. I had to go to Amazon to find the real synopsis for this review and it’s vastly different from Goodreads!

The Briar Book of the Dead follows Ellie Briar, the only one of the Briar family to have been born without magic in living memory. While Ellie’s cousins were trained as witches to support the town of Silverton, Ellie was trained as the Steward so she could be an effective administrator and act as the right hand to her cousin Audra, who was destined to be the next Briar Witch. The Briar family has run the town of Silverton and protected the inhabitants for years while also guarding the border from the leech lords. Surprisingly, the leech lords are only mentioned in passing and play no role at all in the larger story. 

This is a very slow paced book and not much of true interest happens in the first 50 or so pages, but after that things start to get interesting. The characters aren’t saving the world and the setting is limited to Silverton and the outlying farms under the Briar’s protection, so don’t expect an epic fantasy. When Gisela, Ellie’s grandmother and the current Briar Witch, dies in an unexpected fall, things start to change. Audra is thrust into her new role, Ellie is trying to hold the town together, and her other cousins Eira and Nia have their own roles to play as well. Ellie also takes a tumble and when she hits her head she can suddenly see the dead. She’s now trying to balance her demanding duties as Steward and as speaker to the dead, where she tries to put each of the ghosts at peace so they can find their final rest. 

This ended up being an engaging, unputdownable read that’s far more of a small town mystery with witches than what I had expected it to be. Fortunately, that along with the village politics worked for me and I really enjoyed the story! I think it’s unfortunate that every single edition on Goodreads has the wrong synopsis because folks who pick it up based on that might come away disappointed.