Shadow of the Yew Tree
Two people with complicated relationships to magic find each other and fall in love in the rich fantasy novel Shadow of the Yew Tree.
In Kate Gateley’s immersive fantasy novel Shadow of the Yew Tree, two people outrun their dark pasts in a world riven by magical conflicts.
In a reality where some humans are capable of harnessing latent magic, druids work to stop the darkest impulses of wraiths—humans who steal magic, store it in their bodies, and live hideous, long, power-hungry lives. With the death of Cassius, the powerful leader of the wraiths, a power vacuum opens up. Rival wraith groups jockey for control, testing the limits of their dark powers and flooding the world with violence.
In this setting, Ronan, a druid with a checkered past, comes upon the smoking wreckage of a facility where two wraiths, Leviathan and Malphas, were using dark magic to torture and experiment on human subjects. As he races to understand what the wraiths were up to—and how a mysterious victim of their work, Phoebe, managed to survive the blast that leveled the facility—Ronan reckons with his past and with human emotions, attachment, and love.
The chapters shift between Ronan and Phoebe, but they also integrate an astounding array of stories, subplots, and lore. The secondary cast includes Cyril, a grocery store security guard turned wraith, among other fleshed-out beings. There’s bone magic—a dark, taboo power that haunts all, and which druids capable of performing shy away from. Ronan has guilt over his past collaborations with the wraiths; there are ominous signs that Phoebe carries dark wraith magic within her, which stands to compromise her life and agency. Twisted into each of these concerns is the burgeoning, inconvenient love between Ronan and Phoebe. As fantastical events sizzle on all sides, the story digs into heavy questions about love and ethics, asking what responsibility lovers have to one another and if romance can exist between those who are ferocious in guarding their autonomy. Occasional heavy doses of backstory and context, as well as repetitive emphasis on emotional inflection points, interfere with the book’s natural flow, though.
A humorous, irreverent tone animates the story, helping heady, fantastical moments—as when Ronan discusses his experience in the “Otherworld,” a place beyond life and death—to feel grounded. There are rich, philosophical insights about the nature of life (the image of the ouroboros takes on extreme significance) as well as poignant feelings of homesickness, longing for a partner, and the need to talk to someone when overwhelmed. The book’s ability to incorporate the magical and the mundane, and to imagine reincarnated beings muddling through ordinary problems and seeking out therapy for help, makes for a refreshing, often surprising plot.
Set in a world where good and evil are hard to untangle, Shadow of the Yew Tree is an epic fantasy novel about love and magic.
Reviewed by
Willem Marx
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
