A Restless Truth
This second book in The Last Binding trilogy is set on an ocean liner between New York and Southampton. The story is told with great gusto. The Edwardian details of clothes and manners establish a sparkling and brittle setting. Young Maud Blyth must solve a murder and track down a stolen artefact. The stolen item is one of three objects that make up The Last Contract, which is crucial to the security of the magical community that exists in the midst of the ‘unbusheled’ (those who are unaware of magic). There will be devastating consequences if The Last Contract falls into the wrong hands. Maud accumulates a band of fellow sleuths to assist in tracking down the murderer, in a ship full of suspects. The team includes the haughty Baron Hawthorn who has eschewed magic, the scandalous Violet Debenham, and Ross, a jewel thief. Violet ran away from a conventional marriage through being ‘ruined’ by Hawthorn and performing her magic on the stage in New York. She is travelling back to England to inherit a great estate.
As the four work to hunt down the murderer, a love affair blossoms between the worldly-wise Violet and the ingenue Maud. As in the first book of the trilogy (A Marvellous Light), Marske includes a number of well-written sex scenes. The novel has a menagerie of zoo animals in the cargo hold, a set of loathsome relatives (Violet’s), a bad-tempered parrot, an outraged ghost, magical runes, a spellbound tongue, and a pair of villainous and violent magicians. Marske successfully works a lot of exposition and backstory into this multilayered story, while writing in deliciously hyperbolic, exuberant prose. I’m looking forward to the denouement in the third and final book. Highly recommended to all who enjoy their historical fiction feminist, queer, and magical.
