Fiction Reviews
This Monster of Mine
(2025) Shalini Abeysekara, Hodderscape, £20, hrdbk, 410pp, ISBN 978-1-399-74992-3
Sarai is a barmaid, haunted by her past, but dreaming of a better future, who encounters a dark and brooding man and discovers there is more to him than just an eye-catchingly muscular chest. So far, so standard Romantasy fare. What lifts this particular story above the ordinary is that, first of all, it takes place in an Ancient Rome-ish setting. So, Sarai is repeatedly described as wearing a ‘birra’, which was a woollen hooded cloak favoured by Romano-British/Gaulish folk (appropriately enough since she comes from Northern climes) and the odd Latin phrase is sprinkled throughout, such as ‘tibi gratias ago’, or as we would now say, ‘thanks’.
Secondly, and more interestingly, the plot involves twin-set mysteries, one personal, the other more broadly political. The former has to do with Sarai herself, who, years before, suffered a brutal and near-fatal attack at the Academiae. Located in the capital city of Edessa, this is an implausibly large complex (the encircling towers are said to be tens of miles apart) where magic is taught and, crucially, where the four ruling Tetrarchs reside. Each Tetrarch has an assistant, or ‘Petitor’ (trans. ‘applicant’), whose job is to help in dispensing justice and maintaining civil order. And that’s where the wider mystery comes in, as someone has been killing off ‘petitors’.
In desperation the Tetrarchs agree to waive the usual tuition fees, as well as the years of training, and accept as candidates anyone who has the requisite ability to discern whether someone is lying or not, to probe their mind and ‘manifest’ their memories when necessary. Which gives Sarai her ‘in’ as she’s adept at all of the above, although much of her magical resources (invoked via blood smeared over the appropriate rune carved into an ‘armilla’, a.k.a. bracelet) are taken up with hiding her dreadful scars. However, when she arrives at the Academiae, with speculation rife that this untutored Northern barmaid will be the next ‘petitor’ to be murdered, she finds herself assigned to Tetrarch Kadra, the very man she suspects of being involved in her earlier assault.
From that point on, the story rattles along at a fair pace, as Sarai uncovers what lies beneath Kadra’s forbidding, but nevertheless alluring, appearance and expensive robes, both figuratively and literally (this is romantasy after all!). And of course, she also embarks on a double investigation into the reason for the murders and what happened to in her own case, the two being intertwined. In doing so, she not only overcomes her suspicions of Kadra, as well as her own doubts about her abilities – the repeated emphasis on both of which does become a little tiresome, to be honest – but also exposes the rampant greed and corruption residing at the very heart of the Edessan state.
The book comes with multiple trigger warnings but although it is quite dark in places, with some graphic descriptions of deaths and mutilations, there is little here to disturb anyone who has dipped into the ‘grimdark’ sub-genre, for example. From the perspective of someone who likes a good mystery novel, I feel it could have been tightened up a good deal and the holes in Sarai’s often frankly bizarre reasoning patched over. (There are also some odd phrases that should perhaps have used the gentle hand of a good editor – as when Sarai is said to ‘drown out’ a Tetrarch’s lengthy speech, when what is meant is ‘block out’.) And when it comes to the romantic aspects, I’m not perhaps in the right demographic. Nevertheless, for a debut novel this is an enjoyable roller-coaster of a read and one that suggests that Shalini Abeysekara certainly has a lot of potential in this area.
Steven French
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