This book started out slow for me, but it picks up later. Worth a read and I will try her other books. ( )

The Autumn Castle by Kim Wilkins is the first novel I've read by the author, though I did enjoy a novella collection of hers earlier in the year. I can also definitely state it won't be the last novel I read by the author. I should also note I read it as an audiobook borrowed from the library.

Berlin in autumn: Christine Starlight lives in an artists' colony with her lover Jude, whose patience and beauty have eased her battle with chronic pain. But Christine begins to be haunted by childhood recollections of a little girl's disappearance and the flapping of a blackbird's wings. Then her world is rocked by the return of a childhood friend...

Mayfridh rules over a land where a wolf is the queen's counsellor, fate turns on the fall of an autumn leaf and mortals feel no pain. As Christine becomes addicted to Mayfridh's world, so Mayfridh grows addicted to Christine's, falling dangerously in love with Jude.

The Autumn Castle is sort of a portal fantasy in that there is the real world (Berlin in the early 00s) and there is fairyland, but a larger part of the action takes place in the real world. It's also more of a character driven story than a lot of the books I've read recently. There's no Quest and the world doesn't need saving from the start. There is a Bad Guy but several of the other characters are of dubious morality at one point or another. There are secrets, lies and conflicting desires. At a few points, I honestly wasn't sure how some issues were going to be resolved.

Christine is probably the easiest character to like. She means well and not in an offensively misguided way like some of the other characters. The chronic pain aspect was also a nice layer and I liked how it was portrayed in the book. It was something Christine was always aware of and something she wanted to avoid having define her.

The other characters were more difficult to like. Mandy, the serial fairy killer, was obviously reprehensible and irredeemable from the start. The sections from his point of view — mostly extracts from his memoires — are suitable icky and I enjoyed the way they were read in a German accent. In fact, most of the accents were pretty good in the audiobook although I was probably least convinced by the US accents of Christine and her boyfriend.

Mayfridh was an interesting character but one I increasingly lost respect for, especially towards the end. Having lived in fairyland for most of her life as a princess and then a queen, she's quite spoiled and, when she first comes to the real world, naïve about how things work. Both traits evolve as the book progresses but there were many reasons I wanted to tell her off towards the end.

The secondary characters all added significantly to the story and I appreciated the layers of complexity which we learnt as the story progressed. Several people turned out to be not quite what they seemed and there were a couple of revelations I really didn't see coming. A well-crafted story. And I liked the fairytale epilogue at the end. That was nice.

I highly recommend The Autumn Castle to fans of character-driven fantasy books. I think readers who usually don't read much fantasy would also enjoy it since, although the fantasy element is inextricable from the plot, the character-driven narrative is the more complex aspect. Assuming you like that sort of thing, anyway. There are some dark elements, so be warned: vicious murder and light torture within (but no rape, if that helps). The Autumn Castle is the first book in a "suite" of three unrelated novels (set in the same universe? I'm not even sure) and I intend to read the next one in the near future (probably as an audiobook as well; I have it in paper on another continent).

4.5 / 5 stars

Read more reviews on my blog. ( )

I talked up The Veil of Gold so much when it came out that my children's librarian friend at work lent me her ARC of this earlier, UK-published book. I had a hard time getting in to it at first because I didn't care for faery May. I never found her as likable as the other characters; she was always too self-involved to be truly sympathetic. Then again, this isn't really a fault with the book, and I enjoyed the ending, where the happiness May imagined and schemed for doesn't quite live up to reality; it's also appropriate that Christine, the other protagonist who has a tough life and strives to stop being a victim, has the true happy ending. Wilkins excels at integrating the modern world with folklore (here a fascinating array of European faery lore) and creating believable, flawed characters. Mandy Z, the faery serial killer who is the third narrator, even had a few sympathetic moments among the horror that he perpetuates. This is an excellent modern fairy tale and highly recommended. ( )

I absolutely loved Wilkins' VEIL OF GOLD. So much that I backordered a few of her older titles, and I'm just now getting to try this one, THE AUTUMN CASTLE. And boy, is it utterly different. There's always a chance that my tastes have changed, but I can't believe this book was written by the same author as VEIL OF GOLD, a book I've enthusiastically recommended to others. The writing is mostly bland and generic, with very little spark and life to it. The plot itself might've interested me ten years ago, but it doesn't grab me now (and if the writing had a little more spark and life to it, I wouldn't care). A shame, but after 94 pages and my peeking at the ending, there's really no need to continue.

For those readers interested in Wilkins' work, I'd highly recommend starting with VEIL OF GOLD instead. ( )

A dark, mystery-laden fantasy. I found myself wrapped up in the story, although at times I was able to predict what was going to happen next. ( )