Fiction Reviews
Wolf Worm
(2026) T. Kingfisher, Tor – Nightfire, £22 / US$29.99, hrdbk, 276pp, ISBN 978-1-035-05272-1
Something darker than the devil stalks the North Carolina woods. The year is 1899 and Sonia Wilson is a scientific illustrator without work, prospects or hope. When the reclusive Dr. Halder offers her a position illustrating his vast collection of insects, Sonia jumps at the chance to move to his North Carolina manor house and put her talents to use. But soon enough she finds that there are darker things at work in the Carolina woods. What happened to her predecessor, Halder’s wife? Why are animals acting so strangely? And what is behind the peculiar local whispers about ‘blood thieves’? With the aid of the housekeeper and a local healer, Sonia discovers that Halder’s entomological studies have taken him down a dark road full of parasitic maggots that burrow into human flesh – and that his monstrous experiments may grow to encompass his newest illustrator…
Is it just me, or is T. Kingfisher on a run of books about strange subjects, or obsessions? We had the two Sworn Soldier short novels involving fungi, then we had another book where the protagonist is a mistress of poisons, and now we have one concerning insects. Although to be fair to Sonia, who is the protagonist here, she is an illustrator who specialises in drawing plants, and it is eccentric collector of insects, Dr Halder, who has the strange obsession, but Sonia is only too willing to enter his orbit as a way of getting out of her mundane life of teaching art at a stuffy school. Sonia quickly embraces the task, and Kingfisher demonstrates her knowledge of the skills and equipment needed to illustrate these little critters, but then again Kingfisher is also an illustrator as well as a writer.
If anything Wolf Worm belongs to that horror trope that I call “you don’t want to go there” as Sonia journeys to Halder’s house in North Carolina where she encounters the man himself who is everything you would expect an obsessive, reclusive rich man to be, that is odd, argumentative and not very nice. As king of all he surveys in his little world, Hadler has no boundaries, and no-one to stop him taking his obsession too far. However, his flawed personality just illustrates Kingfisher’s ability to create strong characters as she has done here with Sonia, Halder, the Kents, and a herbalist called Ma Kersey who know all about the local folk tales, or are they folk horror tales involving the “blood thieves” who are mutilating bodies, but who are these thieves, and what does Dr. Halder have to do with them? And surely the Devil doesn’t actually live in the nearby woods? Closer to home, what actually happened to the previous illustrator? Why are some animals behaving oddly, and what’s inside the hut in the woods? It is up to Sonia to find out the answers to these questions before it is too late, for her.
Told over 21 chapters and an epilogue, Wolf Worm is a bit of a slow burn, but the characterisation is strong, as is the sense of place, and given Kingfisher’s background and the fact that Sonia is an illustrator, it is a very descriptive novel, combined with some really disgusting, icky passages. However, there is a mystery to solve and Kingfisher keeps the reader guessing as much as Sonia, with secrets to be revealed before we get to the denouement, but on the way we do get an occasional jarring modern turn of phrase which sticks in the reader’s mind longer than it should. That aside, Sonia is a great creation, a gothic heroine who is smart, but not too confident, and a bit anxious which isn’t surprising given her previous circumstances and the death of her father who was her world, but who died, leaving her nothing.
Kingfisher fans are bound to enjoy this latest addition to her oeuvre. It is a solid addition, maybe four stars instead of five, but for readers who are new to this author, it probably is a good place to start.
Ian Hunter
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