I can’t read “I Wish” and not be immediately thrown into Into the Woods. I was tempted to start with “unrelated, but”…but it is related! It’s summertime, and PC Peter Grant has taken to the countryside, where all sorts of fairy-tale creatures are up to no good. “Anything can happen in the woods”, after all.
Out of London and into the country! The National Trust is attempting to manage the wood, families are hiding secrets, a retired wizard lives in a tower full of bees, and ancient gods are running fun fairs in the meadows. Oh- and two little girls disappeared in the middle of the night from two different homes in the village. Grant has lent his services to the local PD; while nothing is immediately magic-related, one must always help out when children are in danger.
I wish I could be part of Grant’s strange little found family of seemingly immortal wizards, boisterous gods of the Thames, over-enthusiastic magical coroners, and other fae (and potential) fae folk! There’s murder, mayhem, and mystery around every corner -and sometimes there’s a deranged puppet ghost possessing your best friend- but I would love to be coming and going from The Folly. I want magic and mayhem…but I’ll skip the murder, thanks. There’s plenty of that in our current (and terrible) world. I also wish I could escape my current location and take off into the country, but the pandemic has other plans. I go to work, I go home. I don’t get to go to any carnivals filled with gods and steam powered Victorian trains.
Peter spends the entirety of this caper outside of London (and almost all of it outside in general), leaving him to be separated from most of the characters with whom he frequently interacts. It was a bit difficult at first to juggle all of the new characters climbing over rock walls, roaring up in muddied pick-ups, and claiming friendships with invisible unicorns- and it would have been disappointing, if they weren’t just as odd as the usual London crew. Although the usual crew has been mostly sidelined, Beverly Brook finally gets her chance to shine.
I don’t have too many left in this series, and I wish I didn’t have to ration them out! More are on the way, but I do hate waiting. I wish I could hop into this world and escape our current crisis climate- but more than that, I wish that people would take our current situation seriously. WEAR A MASK.
