Book Review

Title: Drowned Country by Emily Tesh (The Greenhollow Duology Book 2)

Genre: Fantasy, LGBT

Rating: 3.75 Stars

After really enjoying the first book I couldn’t wait to get into the Drowned Country and return to the story of Tobias and Henry and their romance. The opening to Drowned Country didn’t hit the same way as the first book since Henry has been sulking and letting his power run wild but when his mother requests help with a case her and Tobias are struggling with he is unable to say no. This Henry seems very different in personality from the first book and he doesn’t even treat Tobias the same way when they get to Rothport to deal with an ancient vampire.

However, by the time Henry arrives and is used as bait, they quickly realise there is no vampire but a young woman looking for the entrance to fairyland in order to return as she has been there before. Henry used to be fascinated with fairies but that seems to have disappeared until the road appears before him and Maud but Tobias intervenes sending all three of them down the side of the cliff. From their time in fairyland it appears that it has been dying for a while and they want Maud’s body to change that but she doesn’t understand what she is getting into and it is Henry who saves the day.

When they return home, the fairy follows wanting to take charge of the wood but Bramble intervenes. She explains that while Tobias chose the wood it didn’t choose him but with Henry the wood chose him but he didn’t choose it and his unhappiness is spreading wickedness through the wood. Bramble during this time has planted herself and become the wood so she frees Henry from his responsibility to it allowing him and Tobias to be together. Overall, I didn’t enjoy this story as much as the first one but I did enjoy seeing Tobias and Henry getting their happily ever after.

This is a fun, fast read, and the double mysteries (the quest, and what happened to break up our stalwart heroes since the previous novella) unfold pleasingly. I read Silver in the Wood and the sequel back-to-back, and they’re a nice set — I enjoyed the experience but I feel like I got closure and I’m not itching for more.

The writing is beautiful and atmospheric, although I found myself having trouble staying engaged. The wider world explored in this installation seemed too large for the limited page count and I was unsure of the arc the story planned to take through most of the book.

What a wonderful story. Set 2 years after "Silver in the Woods"

First I re-read "Silver" which I enjoyed more this time than last time. "Drowned Country" was even better than the first book. It was beautifully written. A supernatural story. A folklore story. And such a beautiful love story.

Lovely. Quite wonderful. I was mesmerised.

Thank you for sending me this ARC.

really really wonderful sequel. i loved the continuation of Tobias and Henry's stories. It was a great fantasy story, as well as a romance.

Drowned Country is the gorgeous sequel to the much-vaunted Silver in the Woods, completing the Greenhollow Duology. The two novellas feature a romance between a young man and a ancient being of the forest as they find love in between the spaces of their small, daily interactions.

Tesh has gorgeous, lyrical prose that makes it hard to tear yourself away from the page. She creates a vast, fairytale-esque landscape where the hills are poems and the trees are verse. It would be difficult not to adore her writing.

I’ll confess that I enjoyed Silver in the Wood slightly more than I did Drowned Country. Although I loved the prose, writing, and character, the pacing sometimes felt slightly off. Drowned Country suffered from an issue common to novellas: it ought to have been a novel. Where Silver had just the right amount of plot for its pages, Drowned Country cannot say the same.

That said, it is still very, very much worth your time if you enjoy queer fantasy romances with lush, gorgeous prose.

This is a more complicated book than "Silver in the Wood" (first in this duology) because it's told from Henry's point of view, and Henry is a more complicated person than Tobias. I don't like Henry quite as much, which is part of why I gave it a lower rating, but Henry probably isn't supposed to be particularly likable in this book. At the beginning of the book, Henry is brooding and feeling sorry for himself. We eventually find that this is because Tobias has left him. The reasons why Tobias did so come out slowly in flashbacks throughout the book.

Henry wants to remain in his wood and pout, but his mother (who deserves her own series!!) comes and draws him into one of her supernatural hunts. A vampire, it seems, has been doing vampire things in a crumbling seaside town. At first, Henry doesn't think he can leave the wood. But then he realizes that if he thinks of the wood in a different way, loosed from time, he can go to where the wood was and where its spirit remains. And because this wood was once part of the great forest that covered most of England, that gives Henry a lot of room to move.

This idea of time being perceived differently or not at all by supernatural beings comes into play further in the book, as Henry and Tobias must follow a troubled young girl into Fairyland against their better judgement.

Another reason that I rated the book slightly lower is that the dreamlike, timeless nature of the adventure made it a bit harder to invest in it. I do like that Henry shaped up when it counted, which goes a long way toward making him worthy of Tobias. I would love to see more of this world and although this is billed as a duology I hope that the author returns to what she's created.

Another novella featuring Henry Silver and Tobias. Boasts the familiar excellent atmosphere and a brisker plot set off by a vampire hunt and dealing with the fae. Enjoyed new addition Maud and even Mother Silver. Disliked the flashbacks to two years prior.

Having really enjoyed Silver in the Wood, I was really looking forward to this concluding part of the duology. Happily, this second book was just as wonderful as the first. In this story, we follow the continuing adventures of Silver and Tobias as they are tasked to track down a young woman who has gone missing, believed to have been taken by a 900 year old vampire. I loved the characters in this book, both the returning protagonists and the wonderful introduction of Maud, whose feisty insistence on scholarly enterprise was fabulous. I thought that the plot here was a little bit stronger than the first book, which focused more on the relationship between Tobias and Silver. This one had more of a breakneck pace, moving from one action to the next, but it still managed to retain some of the ethereal quality of the first novella. Overall, I think this is a great duology and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a fairy tale wood.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I loved this. Nice and short but didn't feel cheated in world building, characters, or plot. Creepy in a good way. You do need to read Silver in the Woods before reading this though. But if you like takes on the Green Man and stories with creepy other worldly fae than this is for you.

'Drowned Country' is the sequel of 'Silver in the Wood' and the second and final book in the Greenhollow Duology. The previous book had seriously blown me away and I was kinda reluctant to even start this book because I knew it would be a powerful read (the first book gave that away). Like the first book, I didn't have words to review this one and I took a break from book reviewing for a whole month just to get past the dreams and illusions and the spells that Emily Tesh had cast upon me. I never thought that a duology of 100+ pages novella could do this to me!

The 'Drowned Country' takes up months after 'Silver in the Wood' ended, and unlike the previous novella, we follow Henry Silver in this one. Henry, the new face of the Greenhollow wood, is in depression, sulking and moping, after the dissolution of his relationship with Tobias. Until, his mother, Adela Silver comes to the rescue and gets him to help her investigate on the paranormal case of the disappearance of a young woman named Maud Lindhurst. And the hard part is not the investigation itself, but it was the fact that it meant working with Tobias Finch, who is acting as stoic as ever. And that's were the awkwardness starts.

The setting is mystical and eerie. It takes a while to fit in pace with the story. Even though I keep comparing this book to the previous one, I feel that both were drastically different. This is more fast-paced, action-packed and has more romance than the first one. We also get to know more about Henry Silver in this one.

Overall, I feel that this book is the perfect end to the duology. I had my hopes really up after finished 'Silver in the Wood' and I was not at all disappointed on reading this. I highly recommend this duology to all the fantasy fans and I am pretty confident that Emily Tesh is an author to look out for in the future.

These books are so wonderfully written. I was not sure how a book 2 would even compare, but it is another magical read. I love the story telling and the characters, both new and returning. I am officially hooked!

I actually read this right after I finished Silver in the Wood, and they’re both short enough that I highly recommend it, because going from one to the next is just *chef’s kiss*.

Drowned Country focuses on the delightfully dramatic Silver as he grows into himself, while still expanding this dark and fabulous world that immediately sucked me in.

I had a few complaints about the first book that I didn’t feel in this one. It was a roller coaster ride from beginning to end that had me falling even more in love with old characters (a feat I wasn’t aware was possible, but there you have it) and had me eager to see more of this dark yet beautiful world that Tesh has crafted.

My Thoughts:

- Where Silver in the Wood focuses on Tobias, Drowned Country is a book about Silver, who is so dreadfully dramatic that just when I thought I couldn’t possibly love him more, I did. Every time. It’s clear, from the very first page, that this is Silver’s novella, and that he is a wholly different character from Tobias, who had so much chill it’s a wonder the forest could even grow in the first place. Silver has absolutely no chill. He’s the exact opposite. He’s all drama and sarcasm and fits of passion and restless monologuing, and I enjoyed every single minute of it. Having this novella from his point of view was a fantastic choice, in my opinion, because his character had so much growing to do and I enjoyed taking the journey with him.

- Mrs Silver plays a much bigger role in this novella, and she’s such a welcome addition to the cast. She’s a grounding force for her son, as only a mother can be, even if it’s an unwelcome one, seeing as how Silver would much rather wallow than do anything productive. She ends up being, time and time again, exactly what he needs, though, as she knows her son well enough to provide just the right nudges and motivations. I loved her sly, subtle manipulation in motivating Silver to do something more than just lay around and rot.

- Silver’s character arc in this is absolutely extraordinary, and probably one of my favorites of all time, because this is really a coming of age story for him. Who says you’re too old to discover who you are? Silver is all of, what, 25 during this book. Technically an adult, but not quite grown into himself. That’s more than clear over the course of this novella, as he sulks and pouts and has fits and focuses on himself, refusing to see anyone else’s perspective. It’s something he has to work on through the novella, and something he eventually learns, but the journey there is glorious. Because 25 isn’t that old, and finding yourself is freaking hard. Sometimes it requires losing yourself first.

- This plot felt much more fleshed out than the first novella to me, and I enjoyed how much more it opened the fantastical parts of the world and gave us a peek behind the curtain. Much like the first novella, the world is as grim as it is beautiful. There are stunning descriptions that take my breath away every bit as often as there are dark, harrowing passages that remind the reader that magic is neither sunshine nor roses. The woods comes to life a little more as this dark, primal force, along with the realization that there are other dark, primal forces at work in the world that we may not even realize. Some of the plot conflicts were solved a little easily, but where I felt the novella truly shined was with the personal conflicts, which are much harder (and sometimes uglier) to solve.

I didn't enjoy this as much as the first one, as Finch and Silver's relationship was strained rather than floruishing into the blessed romance we all needed in this year of chaos, 2020. I loved the addition of the fae and I'm hopeful for - what I hope will be - Finch and Silver's future ghost hunting adventures.

I very much loved the feelings this book invoked. Between the slow burn of a queer romance and the dark, gothic vibes with also dark forest-y feels, the magic and myth of this duology really made me fall in love. I'm quite sad that it's over.

When he leaves his deteriorating forest home to assist his mother with hunting a vampire, Silver is not expecting to embark on an expedition into Fairyland. Yet that's exactly what happens when he finds himself partnered up with a bright-eyed young researcher of the supernatural (who took out the vampire that supposedly abducted her). But the fae are tricky creatures, and this journey into the titular drowned country is no easy one.

As the second book in a duology, this definitely isn't the place to meet these characters. Yet Tesh does a good job of giving this one enough backstory to allow it to exist alone. I don't know that I'd recommend reading this one without the other like I did, but it's definitely an intriguing enough story that I'll seek out the first volume.

Drowned Country is the follow-up novella to Emily Tesh’s debut, Silver in the Wood. Rereading my review for Silver was amusing, because I feel like I will repeat myself in some instances when reviewing its sequel.

Yet again, the plot takes us to unexpected places, to the point that I can’t say much about it or else risk spoilers.

Yet again, Mrs Silver steals the show. Emily, if you’re reading this, I beg of you… we need a book from her point of view.

But this newly acquired familiarity with the signature elements of this series doesn’t negate the fact that Drowned Country is an exciting and refreshing read.

Set a couple of years after Silver in the Wood, it’s from the point of view of Henry Silver. And I have to hand it to Emily Tesh for creating what I’m assuming is the first instance of a Gothic Dork. Poor Henry. He tries so hard to be this brooding presence, this mysterious almost-god entity, but oh does he fail. Nobody takes him seriously in this role, least of all his mother, who is seriously cramping his style.

Henry’s (seriously cute and not at all believable) attempts at brooding are a consequence of his separation from Tobias. I was worried about their romance storyline becoming a “will they, won’t they” cycle, but then I remembered that second-chance romances are among my favourite tropes. And for a good reason… just think of the pining.

In this new adventure, we encounter more mythical creatures, a new challenge for our protagonists (yes I’m annoyingly vague… but the plot is really best discovered while reading) and one new human who also needs a whole spin-off series (again, Emily, nudgenudge). It’s enchanting, dark, often funny, and very well-written.

In Drowned Country, Emily Tesh manages to weave myths with human failings, with her signature touch of dark whimsy. She is one of those authors who can mix atmospheric writing with relatable characters, which is something I simply love. I will look forward to more from her.

This title is better than the first in the seres, Silver in the Wood, plus it has just as striking of a cover.

I greatly enjoyed this continuation of Silver and Tobias story. I wanted to kick Henry in the shins for his actions of how he lied to Tobias about his mother needing help and overall I like how that while they ended up together in he end that there was still lot of room for growth between the two of them. I also liked how greatly spooky the drowned forest and the fae felt it was great. I also really enjoyed the audio for this and the first book.

A sequel to Silver in the Wood, Drowned Country has the same fairy tale like atmospheric plot and features Silver as more of the protagonist than Tobias. Although not as engaging as the first book I still enjoyed the read but do recommend you read the first Silver in the Wood first.