Now, Conjurers by Freddie Kölsch
Dec. 8th, 2024 11:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
November 1999
North Dana, Massachusetts.
Nesbit Nuñez discovers the partially devoured body of Bastion Attia - star quarterback, secret witch and Nesbitt’s even-more-secret boyfriend.
Now the remaining members of North Coven - Nesbit, Dove, Drea and Brandy - vow to get answers. Nothing can prepare them for what they uncover. Nesbitt’s nightmare is only just beginning …
An ancient evil. A coven bound in blood.
A love that death cannot destroy.
It’s October 1997.
Nesbit Nuñez moved to North Dana, Massachusetts from New Haven, Connecticut in 1997 to live with his dad (a car mechanic) and older brother Nic (a recovering drug addict). A gifted mechanic himself, Nesbit is enrolled in the Vocational Agriculture course at the local high school, Regional 9 where he excels in practical and engineering courses. It’s there that he meets Bastion Attia, the high school’s handsome star quarterback, academic high flyer and all around popular kid from one of the town’s well-off families.
When Nesbit intervenes in an argument between Dove and Cameron Winship (the youngest son of North Dana’s mayor, who treats Bastion like his mortal enemy), he discovers that Bastion is also the leader of a coven of witches, consisting of him, his younger sister Dove (who has a reputation for being the school slut), Drea (who lives in a trailer with her mum) and Brandy (Drea’s girlfriend who lives with her extremely Christian and abusive mother). Nesbit has always been agnostic about magic but when he’s invited to join the Coven he realises that their power is very real and that they have the ability to make serious changes to their lives.
For 2 years the North Coven live their lives, make their spells and Bastion and Nesbit enter into a secret relationship.
But in November 1999 Bastion is found dead in Stepwood Cemetery, his body covered in bite marks and the key to the crypt where the Coven used to meet missing. Within a few days, everyone in North Dana - including Bastion and Dove’s parents - have forgotten that he even existed.
The Coven know that magic is involved and set about trying to find out how and why Bastion was killed. It isn’t long before they learn that North Dana has a history of weird and unexplained events going back decades and connecting it to someone called Mr Nous - the same person who Bastion used to invoke in their magic …
Freddie Kölsch’s debut YA historical dark fantasy/horror mixes THE CRAFT with IT in an engrossing tale of love, sacrifice and ancient evil. I believed in Nesbit’s relationship with the charismatic but tragic Bastion and the way Kölsch reveals North Dana’s dark history is well done. However I wonder how well modern teenagers will relate to the 90s setting and Cameron didn’t quite work for me in terms of his role in the story.
The main reason to read this is because Kölsch has a great sense of period (and I type that with a bit of a wince as the 90s were my coming-of-age decade). The mentions of things like expensive Nokia cellphones and the music and hangouts all ring very true and gave me a nice feeling of nostalgia. That said, I do wonder how teenagers in 2024 will interact with that because I suspect that some of it is very alien to them. That is not a reason not to check out the book, but it was something that kept nagging at the back of my mind, in part because the book does make a number of open allusions to the movie THE CRAFT and I don’t know how much that means anything to modern teens.
Kölsch gives Nesbit a great narrative voice and I enjoyed the way she lays out his backstory and his developing relationship with Bastion. Being a newcomer also gives him a good eye for North Dana and its inhabitants that feels believable. The romance plays out in a way that I believed and a core theme running through this book is the tragedy of Bastion losing his life when he had such potential and how the secrets he was keeping stopped him from being fully honest with Nesbit.
Moving on to Bastion I have to give Kölsch props for giving him a linguistic disability in that he has to start ever sentence with a word beginning with the letter ’N’. Again, the way Kölsch draws out the reason for this is heartbreaking and what came through for me is how many layers there are going on in his story. This is actually a book that benefits from at least one re-reading because with the time jumps that she uses in the text, there will be some clues that you don’t see the first time around but which sets out key revelations later.
Given all of this complexity, I did find Cameron Winship to be less interesting in comparison. This isn’t to say that Kölsch doesn’t try - there is some depth to his character as she draws out his family life and the difficult relationship with his father. However it’s easier to see where his story is going and the revelations that come about him have a predictability to them that kind of detracts from the richness of the main plot line.
Also less successful are the characters of Drea, Dove and Brandy, which is a shame because they each have some interesting hooks to their characters - notably Brandy whose mother is very abusive. I did get Drea and Dove confused a number of times in the text and for me they just don’t have enough to do in the story.
Kölsch’s nod to Stephen King’s IT is very well done. I enjoyed the way she draws out the dark history of North Dana and Mr Nous’s role with it. There are some genuinely chilling scenes towards the end of the book when Mr Nous starts to exert his power and although one scene reminded me a lot of THE FACULTY, the way Kölsch weaves it all together has a lot of tension.
All in all, I thought it was a well done debut novel and notwithstanding my criticisms there’s more than enough here to make me very keen to read what Kölsch writes next.
The Verdict:
Freddie Kölsch’s debut YA historical dark fantasy/horror mixes THE CRAFT with IT in an engrossing tale of love, sacrifice and ancient evil. I believed in Nesbit’s relationship with the charismatic but tragic Bastion and the way Kölsch reveals North Dana’s dark history is well done. However I wonder how well modern teenagers will relate to the 90s setting and Cameron didn’t quite work for me in terms of his role in the story.
NOW, CONJURERS was released in the United Kingdom on 6th June 2024. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
North Dana, Massachusetts.
Nesbit Nuñez discovers the partially devoured body of Bastion Attia - star quarterback, secret witch and Nesbitt’s even-more-secret boyfriend.
Now the remaining members of North Coven - Nesbit, Dove, Drea and Brandy - vow to get answers. Nothing can prepare them for what they uncover. Nesbitt’s nightmare is only just beginning …
A love that death cannot destroy.
It’s October 1997.
Nesbit Nuñez moved to North Dana, Massachusetts from New Haven, Connecticut in 1997 to live with his dad (a car mechanic) and older brother Nic (a recovering drug addict). A gifted mechanic himself, Nesbit is enrolled in the Vocational Agriculture course at the local high school, Regional 9 where he excels in practical and engineering courses. It’s there that he meets Bastion Attia, the high school’s handsome star quarterback, academic high flyer and all around popular kid from one of the town’s well-off families.
When Nesbit intervenes in an argument between Dove and Cameron Winship (the youngest son of North Dana’s mayor, who treats Bastion like his mortal enemy), he discovers that Bastion is also the leader of a coven of witches, consisting of him, his younger sister Dove (who has a reputation for being the school slut), Drea (who lives in a trailer with her mum) and Brandy (Drea’s girlfriend who lives with her extremely Christian and abusive mother). Nesbit has always been agnostic about magic but when he’s invited to join the Coven he realises that their power is very real and that they have the ability to make serious changes to their lives.
For 2 years the North Coven live their lives, make their spells and Bastion and Nesbit enter into a secret relationship.
But in November 1999 Bastion is found dead in Stepwood Cemetery, his body covered in bite marks and the key to the crypt where the Coven used to meet missing. Within a few days, everyone in North Dana - including Bastion and Dove’s parents - have forgotten that he even existed.
The Coven know that magic is involved and set about trying to find out how and why Bastion was killed. It isn’t long before they learn that North Dana has a history of weird and unexplained events going back decades and connecting it to someone called Mr Nous - the same person who Bastion used to invoke in their magic …
Freddie Kölsch’s debut YA historical dark fantasy/horror mixes THE CRAFT with IT in an engrossing tale of love, sacrifice and ancient evil. I believed in Nesbit’s relationship with the charismatic but tragic Bastion and the way Kölsch reveals North Dana’s dark history is well done. However I wonder how well modern teenagers will relate to the 90s setting and Cameron didn’t quite work for me in terms of his role in the story.
The main reason to read this is because Kölsch has a great sense of period (and I type that with a bit of a wince as the 90s were my coming-of-age decade). The mentions of things like expensive Nokia cellphones and the music and hangouts all ring very true and gave me a nice feeling of nostalgia. That said, I do wonder how teenagers in 2024 will interact with that because I suspect that some of it is very alien to them. That is not a reason not to check out the book, but it was something that kept nagging at the back of my mind, in part because the book does make a number of open allusions to the movie THE CRAFT and I don’t know how much that means anything to modern teens.
Kölsch gives Nesbit a great narrative voice and I enjoyed the way she lays out his backstory and his developing relationship with Bastion. Being a newcomer also gives him a good eye for North Dana and its inhabitants that feels believable. The romance plays out in a way that I believed and a core theme running through this book is the tragedy of Bastion losing his life when he had such potential and how the secrets he was keeping stopped him from being fully honest with Nesbit.
Moving on to Bastion I have to give Kölsch props for giving him a linguistic disability in that he has to start ever sentence with a word beginning with the letter ’N’. Again, the way Kölsch draws out the reason for this is heartbreaking and what came through for me is how many layers there are going on in his story. This is actually a book that benefits from at least one re-reading because with the time jumps that she uses in the text, there will be some clues that you don’t see the first time around but which sets out key revelations later.
Given all of this complexity, I did find Cameron Winship to be less interesting in comparison. This isn’t to say that Kölsch doesn’t try - there is some depth to his character as she draws out his family life and the difficult relationship with his father. However it’s easier to see where his story is going and the revelations that come about him have a predictability to them that kind of detracts from the richness of the main plot line.
Also less successful are the characters of Drea, Dove and Brandy, which is a shame because they each have some interesting hooks to their characters - notably Brandy whose mother is very abusive. I did get Drea and Dove confused a number of times in the text and for me they just don’t have enough to do in the story.
Kölsch’s nod to Stephen King’s IT is very well done. I enjoyed the way she draws out the dark history of North Dana and Mr Nous’s role with it. There are some genuinely chilling scenes towards the end of the book when Mr Nous starts to exert his power and although one scene reminded me a lot of THE FACULTY, the way Kölsch weaves it all together has a lot of tension.
All in all, I thought it was a well done debut novel and notwithstanding my criticisms there’s more than enough here to make me very keen to read what Kölsch writes next.
The Verdict:
Freddie Kölsch’s debut YA historical dark fantasy/horror mixes THE CRAFT with IT in an engrossing tale of love, sacrifice and ancient evil. I believed in Nesbit’s relationship with the charismatic but tragic Bastion and the way Kölsch reveals North Dana’s dark history is well done. However I wonder how well modern teenagers will relate to the 90s setting and Cameron didn’t quite work for me in terms of his role in the story.
NOW, CONJURERS was released in the United Kingdom on 6th June 2024. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
