The Seventh Banisher
by A.K. Larkwood
Blurb:
The Mallory cousins have been summoned to their ancestral home by their great-aunt Sophia―or as the world knows her, the great Banisher, warden of the Isles and the singular defense against unspeakable otherworldly horrors.
Whoever can survive on the remote island for ten days and ten nights will inherit her house, her title, and her magic.
But the island is a labyrinth of deadly puzzles, terrifying ghosts, and scheming cousins with their own scores to settle. By the time the ten days are up, almost everyone on the island will be dead.
Almost everyone. Because someone else was there, witness to it all. And the story they tell is far darker than the blood coating the grounds of that cursed place.
My Review:
There is an island out there battered by
wind and hollowed out by centuries of dark purpose, and at its heart stands the
Keep, a structure that has weathered hundreds of years of something far worse
than storms. Welcome to the Great Mewstone, where the dead do not rest and the
ocean itself cannot be trusted.
The premise alone is enough to pull you in.
Nine Mallory and Blythe cousins are summoned to compete in a ten day trial to
determine who among them will succeed Sophia Mallory as the sixth Banisher, the
one soul standing between the living world and the most powerful, most
dangerous ghost in existence. It is part family reunion, part supernatural
gauntlet, and part murder mystery, think Knives Out with ghosts and inherited
magic, and you are somewhere in the right neighborhood.
The world A.K. Larkwood has built here is
genuinely fascinating. A reality where hauntings are not isolated events but a
constant, creeping presence across land and sea, held in check only by the
Banisher and the power of the Keep. The scope of that mythology left me hungry
for more, how far does the protection reach, how much worse does it get at the
edges of the world? Those questions linger in the best possible way.
The journey to the middle requires some
patience. The mystery is layered and intentionally disorienting, and there are
moments early on where the intrigue threatens to outpace your ability to follow
it. Push through. Because once the pieces begin clicking into place the story
opens up into something genuinely gripping and hard to put down.
Our narrator is learning alongside you,
which makes her occasionally unreliable and always compelling. She is perhaps a
little too easily swept up by the people around her, developing infatuations at
a pace that sometimes feels rushed. But underneath that she is deeply likeable,
and you will find yourself firmly in her corner by the time the stakes truly
arrive.
The ending leaves threads deliberately loose
in the way standalones sometimes do, with questions that linger beyond the
final page. But the ride getting there is absolutely worth taking.
Give this one a chance. It earns it.
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