Book Review: ‘The Witch Below the Dreaming Wood’ is Magical Realism Meets Arthurian Legend as You’ve Never Read it Before
Set primarily in Wales, 1941, The Witch Below the Dreaming Wood by H.G. Parry felt like a cross between Ava Reid’s A Study in Drowning, T.H. White’s The Once and Future King and The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. There’s the dreamy, magical quality to the story, but then you also have the historical backdrop of WWII during the Blitz. I especially loved Nimue’s chapters. Destined to be the downfall of Merlin, I really haven’t read much about her story in relation to Arthur and Camelot. She’s a strong and tragic character, and I absolutely loved her. Then we have Ellie, an archivist Librarian sent to Wales to go through a private library. She’s the only one dreaming of Nimue while the rest of Great Britain is dreaming of Arthur. There’s definitely some magical realism happening in this historical fiction. I was a little thrown off by some of the other characters who make an appearance, but I’ll get into that below. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this dual POV standalone, and if you love atmospheric writing, myths and legends come to life, plus a love that can stand across the ages, I think you’ll enjoy it too. Let’s get into it…
Things to Know:
Standalone
Historical Fantasy
Magical Realism
Arthurian legends
Time travel
WWII backdrop
Set primarily in Wales
Elaine aka Ellie is a bit of a forlorn character when she arrives at Camlan House. I think she has some survivor’s guilt from the London bombings, and she wants to stay and do her part, but her boss sends her to Wales to, in theory, be more safe, and catalog a mysterious ancient library. She meets Tom, the groom and groundskeeper, who was injured in a plane crash. He’s also got a lot of guilt floating around him, and they form a beautiful friendship. I definitely thought it was going to develop into something more, but it all makes sense in the end (no spoilers!). And I can’t forget about the mysterious Housekeeper, Mrs. Leaf, who keeps disappearing.
I really liked how Parry weaved together the two POVs. Ellie is dreaming of Nimue’s story, and Nimue’s chapters are essentially what Ellie is dreaming. Nimue and Merlin’s story was so beautiful and tragic, and not something I’ve read before. It felt reminiscent of Madeline Miller’s Circe. There is also a time travel element that I felt was brilliant. I also absolutely loved the concept she came up with of the veil between worlds thinning during times of extreme tragedy. It made the WWII setting that much more poignant even if we were removed a bit from the actual fighting.
Now, as I mentioned above, I was a little thrown off by Robin Hood and Maid Marian making an appearance. At first, I was like, oh no, are we just going to get a jumble of folk and myth characters from every legend ever? But it ended up being a small piece of the story. Was it necessary? No, but not the end of the world. There’s also hounds from the Wild Hunt, which made me think we were going to get more Fae, but then didn’t. So there are parts of the story where you think it may be going in one direction, and then you just have to trust the process.
I do wish we would have had a bit more plot explanation of the dreaming of Arthur. It’s such an interesting plot point, but I didn’t feel like it was explored in depth, or maybe I didn’t feel it had a strong enough resolution to the rest of the story. However, I truly enjoyed this read (it’s my second H.G. Parry book, and I’ll be back for more!), and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a great magical Fall fantasy read.
I did an immersive read with my physical ARC and audiobook (thank you Orbit!), and the audiobook is wonderful. Because you spend a lot of the book in a ‘dream’ the narrator really captures that dreamlike feeling. I highly recommend it. If you want to try out the audiobook, you can find it on Audible or Libro.fm (ProTips: Audible is 99 cents/mo for three months (3 books for $2.97) right now AND you can get two free audiobooks on Libro.fm with the code SWITCH right now).
Favorite Quotes from ‘The Witch Below the Dreaming Wood’:
“Stories grow and change over years. They’re never entirely true. Sometimes they’re not true at all.”
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“You could part a thousand times, you could travel thousands of miles, you could forget each other entirely, and yet every time you see each other you’ll only fall in love again.”
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“Just because something was going to happen, doesn’t mean she would let it.”
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