Box of Tricks

Each year thousands of tourists visit the huge, prehistoric stones, marveling at their awesome size and mystery. Then one group came not to marvel but to resurrect the dark primal magic of Druid horror; to call up the unholy power that had once reigned supreme; to loose its terrifying occult power again on an unsuspecting world. They called themselves The Conjurers.

Harris is a good writer; I truly enjoyed The Portent. But she has the unfortunate habit of often leaving too much unexplained. The characters don’t ask the questions that most people would ask, do things that you can’t help but wonder what the hell they’re thinking.

This is especially true of the main character, Easter Mulraven. Her husband mysteriously disappeared years before. Her parents are dead. Lonely, she starts taking in the young people who wander into the village. She asks nothing about them; seems to be under the spell of one particularly striking young man. But the people of the village want them gone. They won’t really tell her why, other than a rather odd warning “they’re evil.”

There are some truly gruesome and terrifying events that take place, but since everyone talks, and thinks, in riddles, it’s hard to figure what exactly is going on. I’m still not totally sure.





( Mount TBR 2025 Book Links 1-25 )

26. Lost and Found by Marilyn Harris
27. Strange Weather: Four Short Novels by Joe Hill
28. Three Wild Dogs by Markus Zusak
29. Full Throttle by Joe Hill
30. Lost in a Good Book (Thursday Next #2) by Jasper Fforde
31. Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky
32. Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King
33. Pearly Everlasting by Tammy Armstrong
34. The Women of Troy (Women of Troy #2) by Pat Barker
35. The Conjurers by Marilyn Harris







Written by a female author
1. The Conjurers by Marilyn Harris

A daring and timely feminist retelling of The Iliad from the perspective of the women of Troy who endured it—an extraordinary follow up to The Silence of the Girls from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Regeneration Trilogy.

Troy has fallen and the victorious Greeks are eager to return home with the spoils of an endless war—including the women of Troy themselves. They await a fair wind for the Aegean.

It does not come, because the gods are offended. The body of King Priam lies unburied and desecrated, and so the victors remain in suspension, camped in the shadows of the city they destroyed as the coalition that held them together begins to unravel. Old feuds resurface and new suspicions and rivalries begin to fester.

Largely unnoticed by her captors, the one time Trojan queen Briseis, formerly Achilles's slave, now belonging to his companion Alcimus, quietly takes in these developments. She forges alliances when she can, with Priam's aged wife the defiant Hecuba and with the disgraced soothsayer Calchas, all the while shrewdly seeking her path to revenge.


While perhaps not as exciting as the first book there is still much going on. And though much of this wasn’t in The Iliad, Barker allows us to get to know the characters by giving them this lull in the action. Troy has been defeated, but the Greeks are unable to sail for home due to a wind that constantly blows toward shore.

But, as in the first book, the protagonist is Briseis, given to Achilles as a war prize and now carrying his child. Wed to one of his lieutenants, she is no longer a slave, giving her more latitude in where she goes and what she does. Still, she is not exactly free. Caught between the Greeks and the Trojan women who are now slaves, she creates her own world that is part of both.

I know some readers didn’t care for the lack of action, but I found it a wonderful way to actually get to know the characters. Usually it’s battles I have to skim through, glassy-eyed from one too many deaths (it’s a rare writer who can make them interesting for me.) Here, the days pass slowly, their lives in stasis.

For the women, their homes are gone. They wait to see what will become of them.





( Mount TBR 2025 Book Links 1-25 )

26. Lost and Found by Marilyn Harris
27. Strange Weather: Four Short Novels by Joe Hill
28. Three Wild Dogs by Markus Zusak
29. Full Throttle by Joe Hill
30. Lost in a Good Book (Thursday Next #2) by Jasper Fforde
31. Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky
32. Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King
33. Pearly Everlasting by Tammy Armstrong
34. The Women of Troy (Women of Troy #2) by Pat Barker