Real fantasy

Like a Charm by Elle McNicoll (Knights Of, 2022)

Elle McNicoll's third book is more than a worthy successor to A Kind of Spark and Show Us Who You Are. When I read before publication that it was going to explore the fantasy genre I was, I'll admit, surprised. With two books set firmly in 'the real world' (albeit with a science-fiction twist in SUWYA), I was unsure what this departure in style was going to look like. Having read the book now, and despite its pages packed with faeries, a vampire, kelpies and witchcraft, Like a Charm always feels completely real; this is fantasy writing of the highest order. 

It's quite a magical thing in itself to have done. McNicoll's searing passion for her subject - the striving for understanding and championing of neurodiversity - continues to drive forward the narrative and her main character, Ramya, just as it did in her first two novels. But in Like a Charm there is something very potent; the pent-up energies of the main character's upbringing, family and their past have developed into something fearful to behold. 

Ramya is angry. Her voice shows all the confusion and frustration that has been the everyday pattern of her life: she loses her grandfather, the only person who understood her, at an early age; her parents are distant, physically and emotionally; and at school she is subject to dull 'workshops', ostensibly there to support her with her dyspraxia. No-one is listening. Even her two curious aunts, who seem that they may be a key to something, do not readily engage. 

The catalyst to all this energy bursting out and overflowing is the death of her grandfather. He leaves her a peculiar book that warns of 'The Sirens' - which, as the novel goes on to reveal, are a particularly malignant, genuinely dangerous, enemy Thereafter, along with her cousin Marley, whose empathy helps him to become an unexpected ally, and the mysterious guidance of 'The Stranger', Ramya is thrown into a quest - on the surface, the sheen of a fantastical adventure; in actual fact, a pathway to a coming-of-age self-discovery.

With this third novel, McNicoll's writing continues to astonish. She has taken risks with each book she has produced and her originality continues to flourish. Nothing disappoints and that is a rare gift indeed. Hers are books that need to be put into every young person's hands...and into every listening grown ups', too. No hyperbole is intended when I say the world will be a better place if McNicoll were to be read widely. 

And, I am certain, she will be. 

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Like a Charm is published by Knights Of and is available now from all good bookshops. It is Blackwells' February Book of the Month...rightly so.