"The Hexologists" by Josiah Bancroft

Iz and Warren Wilby are private investigators with a specialty in untangling the paranormal mysteries that plague a city where power can be bound with the proper string of hexes. It's perhaps understandable then that the king's secretary turns to them when he insists on being baked into a cake. The Wilbys want to turn the request away, as they tend to prefer working with the city's downtrodden, but when a creature attacks them in their study while meeting with the secretary, the need for answers turns personal. Iz and Warren go on the hunt through the city and into the last fragments of a dying spirit's mind in search of the culprit, and in doing so uncover some royal secrets that might have been better left undisturbed.

The Hexologists by Josiah Bancroft is a a fantasy mystery novel that comes with all the things one might expect from a story of the genre, and then takes it sideways in the best way possible. Iz Wilby is an accomplished hexologist at the top of her field and grates against the constraints placed on her as a woman in a Victorian-style world; Warren operates more as an assistant to Iz during investigations, but is a wizard in the kitchen and in creating a home life Iz can come back to. They operate in a way that's complimentary to the mystery solving process, which is a fascinating divergence from the typical script of hard-nosed investigators fully dedicated to solving the mystery. It also helps that Bancroft depicts how much Iz and Warren love each other as equal partners in their marriage, which opens the door to exploring how mysteries can be solved in more ways than the typical single mindedness displayed in detective stories.

For readers, The Hexologists would appeal to anyone looking for a fantasy book that comes with a strong female protagonist and a penchant for magic without losing sight of the fact that people are people too. Iz is a snarky, intelligent character, and Warren’s devotion to her offers a refreshing change from typical narratives that feature a couple as the main characters of the story. Even if fantasy isn’t typically attractive, The Hexologists might still be something one would enjoy if they typically gravitate towards mystery novels, or even some romance books, since Bancroft is adept at figuring out ways of surprising the reader and making the Wilby’s relationship a major point in the novel without it turning into the main focus.

For writers, Bancroft’s novel is a good way of understanding how to integrate love and relationships into a story without it relying on typical hyperbolic tropes. Similar to The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, the Wilbys don’t devolve into professions of love or grand gestures the way some novels that discuss love do, but it goes a step further by making their relationship something whose passion for one another, while apparent, is often a few layers beneath the usual observation. Further, Bancroft’s development of both Iz and Warren individually can be a good template for writers looking to create characters that sit outside the typical gender norms. Both Iz and Warren provide templates for understanding what a woman and man could be for the reader that are far more complex than some modern day thinkers on the topic tend to allow, making it useful for anyone trying to do something similar with their own cast of characters.

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