Wildlord

Seventeen-year-old Tom Swinton must navigate increasingly terrifying supernatural happenings in this meandering, rural England-set fantasy by Womack (The Arrow of Apollo). Tom has lived full-time at his boarding school since his parents died in a boating accident five years ago, until his uncle James reaches out for the first time, inviting Tom to spend the summer at his Mundham farm. Desperate to spend time away from school and eager to meet new family members, Tom readily agrees. But his idiosyncratic uncle is distant, the two “domestics” who attend to the property are mercurial, and the farm itself proves remote and ramshackle. Soon after Tom settles in, he accidentally taps into previously unknown magic, angering enigmatic, supernatural people known as the Samdhya, whose realm is separated from the farm by a thin magical veil. As Tom grows into his powers, he uncovers the real reason James called him to the farm, and their connection with the Samdhya. Though the cast is at times thinly characterized, Womack infuses the novel with a creeping sense of disconnection from the contemporary world, emphasizing this ethereal tale’s claustrophobic atmosphere. Characters present as white. Ages 12–15. (Oct.)