Can’t Wait Wednesday: Once Was Willem by M.R. Carey

Can’t-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings to share upcoming book releases that we’re excited about! This meme is based on Waiting on Wednesday, which was created and hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

M.R. Carey has done horror and science fiction so well, and now he appears with a fantasy novel! The synopsis is tantalizingly vague but it’s enough that I immediately added Once Was Willem to my TBR. Also, I adore this cover, mostly because the longer you look at it, the stranger it gets. The release date is currently listed as March 4, 2025.

From the bestselling M. R. Carey comes an utterly unique and enchantingly dark epic fantasy fable like no other.

This is the tale of Once Was Willem, who – eleven hundred and some years after the death of Christ, in the kingdom that had but recently begun to call itself England – rose from the dead to defeat a great evil facing the humble village of Cosham.

Pennick for all its beauty was ever a place with a dark reputation. The forests of the Chase were said to be home to nixies and boggarts, and there was a common belief, passed down through many generations, that the castle housed an unquiet ghost of terrible and malign power. These rumours I can attest were all true; indeed they fell short of the truth by a long way . . .