The Green Man’s Debt by Juliet E McKenna
I would like to thank Wizard’s Tower Press for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher – Wizard’s Tower Press
Published – Out Now
Price – £17.00 paperback £4.99 ebook
Dan Mackmain’s mum is a dryad, so he knows asking someone from the supernatural world for a favour means there’ll be a price to pay, sooner or later. He’s been waiting for the Hunter, the antler-crowned guardian of predators and prey, to call in his debt.
He wasn’t expecting this to happen when he and his girlfriend Fin were planning to visit her sister Iris and her new husband Conn. Dan has prepared for this unknown challenge, reading up on Irish folklore. So far, he’s learned how different those who live in that unseen realm will be from anyone he's encountered before – and that crossing them could be very dangerous.
I think for me series comes in all sorts. There are the comfortable ones where I revisit a world and characters I’ve spent many many years with. I get to catch up once a year (or this year in a an unusual binge phase) and I catch up with their next adventure. A good author makes their world slowly evolve and the characters perhaps develop and dipping back into Ian Rankin’s Rebus novels was a recent pleasure this summer. Another strand I enjoy are the series where the format of the series allows for an author to experiment. A glorious example of this for me is the Discworld where the books went next often surprised me again and again. An interesting mix now of the two is Juliet E McKenna’s excellent The Green Man series and in its ninth outing The Green Man’s debt we get a fast paced action tale that should definitely entertain but also the regular reader may suspect that the board the pieces are on is about to start a new longer game that leaves me keen to see where the series goes next.
Dan Mackmain is the son a dryad and a human. He can see the supernatural beings that lurk often in plain sight and this drew him to the attention of an entity that guards nature known as The Green Man. Over many adventures Dan has helped battle monsters and help people but also gained a vast network of friends and is now aware of other entities like the one known as the Hunter. Recently Dan has been plagued with a recurring dream involving a wolf and is now aware that following a recent episode where he asked the Hunter for help now the Hunter is calling a favour in. Dan and his girlfriend Fin are going to Ireland for some family business, but it is also increasingly clear this is where the Hunter expects dan to help. Dan though is finding Ireland a bigger mystery than he expected.
After nine books crossing England, Wales and Scotland it was time that Ireland came into the mix but pleasingly McKenna adds a new dimension into the story. For reasons unknown Irish mythology and supernatural beings off limits to those this side of the Irish Sea. After establishing quite a large cast of characters and networks Dan and Fin find themselves a little more in the dark than we have had for some time. This helps put us on the back seat and stresses that we are in a very different country with different traditions, myths and histories than we are often unaware of.
As its on the cover I think we can confirm that wolves and myth play a big part in this story. The strange dream leads Dan to a hidden community of Shapers in Ireland whose roots go back centuries. Off to the countryside of Ireland Dan gets plunged very quickly into a mystery where someone is trying to expose the group by a large wolf appearing on cameras bringing the attention of the police and potentially the media. McKenna throws in generational tension, a romantasy author seeking her lost roots and this creates a fast-flowing action paced tale of Dan trying to find the culprit and stop them but soon realising that these wolves are more than a match for him in strength and cunning. Dan assists ably but is not the English guy from outside sorting everything out himself which could easily have fallen flat. It comes to a very effective finale tying up all the book’s core plots. Very much the kind of story I was happy to be swept away on.
However, for me the interesting angle is that there is a nagging feeling in this story we are just watching the first act. McKenna throws in a host of unusual nuggets of information that suggests this is the start of the series’ next big cycle of stories. Why is there some sort of boundary between the magical entities and who really is behind all these strange events.?
The Green Man’s Debt is story that delivers action, suspense and something that manages to bring Irish folklore into modern day rural fantasy but dangles a new direction for the series subtly. I will as always await the next tale eagerly and highly recommend this one!
