The longer I think on it, the more I think I liked The Hexologists. Sometimes while I reading, I wasn’t feeling super into it, and as soon as I finished I still wasn’t sure. I think part of the challenge for me was that there’s a lot of necessary world-building going on at the same time characters and scenarios are being set up, and some things don’t get even attention. I’m still not sure about the narration; the narrative voice for random reasons suddenly seems to shift between more casual talking about the main characters as Iz and War, but then at other places gets more formal about them as Isolde and Warren (Wilbys both). They are a married couple, and it took me a while to like them as a pair, but eventually their dynamic does actually work, and also they’re the title Hexologists, although it seems like it’s more Iz who does the magic, while War is more the back-up or clean up as it might needs be. They’ve got this mysterious bag, that’s kind of like Mary Poppin’s bag except that it really is it’s own sort of dimension, and there’s a ton of magical stuff in there, not limited to but including Felivox the dragon. Felivox is one of the more entertaining individuals when he shows up (he “bookish” and “only occasionally eats people”) except that we really only see him once; the rest of the time we hear him.
The magic system and world of the story is pretty intricate and interesting; it’s not exactly steampunk, but it’s kind of got that vibe. There’s history and different practices that require different skill sets. Someone at one point summarizes by saying hexologists are artists, alchemists are dancers, and wizards are songsters. There’s more hexing and alchemy than wizardry, and of the three only hexing is really openly practiced as a full discipline anymore for historical reasons that are sort of explained. There are also ghoul-like things that suck all the bad memories out of you but this is deadly, there’s hell mushrooms, a shadow realm, a fiery hell-realm, ghosts, living memories, and all sorts of interesting places and folks within them.
There’s a couple of mysteries, one that the Hexologists are hired to look into, namely a mysterious letter claiming to be from the bastard child of the unwell king (what’s wrong with him is another question), another that’s old history (Iz’s dad), and hints at a few others including a murder or two, possibly related to whatever Cholmondeley is up to. Iz is definitely the more intense or the pair, while War is the feelings and empathy (at least openly); Iz’s mom is also an interesting character as a librarian with some definitely force of personality. I think that the pacing and relating some of these many threads is the other thing that gave me some struggle for about the first half or so.
Supposedly this is book 1 in the series, and while the main problems are answered, there’s enough left open that I’d be interested to see the sequel whenever it comes out.