Everything has a price, and those who deal with the devil pay dearly in this enthralling dark fantasy about redemption, sacrifice, and a Hell-bound battle between good and evil.

Exiled exorcist Lucian Negru made a choice that has haunted him for years. He abandoned his lover, Rachael, to Hell to save the damned soul of his sister, Catarina. But Catarina doesn’t want to be saved. Now a prisoner in his reviled sister’s home, Lucian is being used as a tool to help fulfill Catarina’s wicked unleash the demons of the underworld to wage a war above.

Lucian’s first step in thwarting Catarina’s plan is to make amends with the past. Escaping captivity, he is determined to find Rachael even if it means entering the gates of Hell itself. Only then does he cross paths with a young girl fleeing from her own terrors. With the frightened foundling in tow, Lucian embarks on a journey to right a terrible wrong, to protect the innocent, and to rescue the woman he loves.

But no one escapes Catarina’s wrath. She’s just as driven in her to track down her brother wherever it leads. And when she finds him, and she will, she vows to turn his heart to glass, grind it to powder, and crush the souls of everyone he loves.

As her website proclaims, “T. Frohock has turned a love of history and dark fantasy into tales of deliciously creepy fiction.” Most recently, in her Los Nefilim series she has delivered a trilogy of novellas exploring the interventions of demons and angels in human lives during the Spanish Civil War. This is perhaps something of a niche historical period, but one which Frohock has extended into the more widely known territory of the Second World War with further Los Nefilim novels where battles in heaven have their terrestrial parallels with mortals and earthbound-immortals inevitably drawn into. The Los Nefilim books are characterised by a diverse cast of compelling characters, following intricate plots and entangled in imaginative magic systems.

However, Frohock’s debut, back in 2011 was the very different novel Miserere: An Autumn Tale, where the action took place on a parallel world called Woerld that Earth children could – rarely – be transported to.

As with many great books, Miserere had a great cover which had me pulling it off the shelf and delving deep into the lives of its three main characters, Lucian the maimed Katharos (a kind of holy knight), Rachael his dangerously possessed ex, (sic – I did not mean ‘possessive’) and Catarina, Lucian’s spoilt and rash twin sister.  I was sucked into the trio’s travails much as the hapless Lindsay was – a child dragged from Earth into Woerld, a place stranger than Narnia with foes more dangerous than the white Queen.

However, unlike Los Nefilim, Miserere did not spawn a series of sequels despite the seasonal opportunity implicit in the subtitle ‘an Autumn tale.’ As Frohock identifies in her foreword to this new release, back in 2011 the book faced an issue of mis-marketing which meant Miserere did not get that critical mass of readership to drive publisher enthusiasm for further books in the world of Woerld.

As I have noted in other reviews, Frohock is an author who consistently defies categorisation. While she takes inspiration from real world history, including religious history, she weaves across genre boundaries and writes whatever damn story she wants to – which disrupts the neat pigeon-holing strategies beloved of marketing managers. While Miserere takes a lot of inspiration from Judeo-Christian religion it was a travesty to try and market it as ‘Christian fiction.’ At the same time those fantasy fans who thought it too religiously orientated for their taste missed out on an absorbing and inventive tale of characters you cannot help but cheer (or jeer) for!

As time passes and contractual containments fade, Frohock has recovered the rights to Miserere and she has taken the opportunity to refine and partially rewrite a story I first fell in love with ten years ago. I was careful not to reread my review of the original release before venturing into the ARC of this new version. However, my overall impression is that this latest telling of Miserere feels even better than the original, smoother and sharper with fine plot, character and world-building all glued together seamlessly by some exquisite prose.

The universe of Miserere has four nested worlds – cogently explained at one point by Lucian with a sketch of four concentric circles. The outer/uppermost ‘world’ is a conventional Heaven and the innermost circle is Hell. In between these extremities lies our own contemporary Earth – just below Heaven – with all its technological and medical miracles, while between our Earth and Hell stands the battleground world of Woerld, where the lived proximity to demons gives conventional religion (of Christian and other monotheistic kinds) both more credence and also more power, and where technology soon falters and fails.

It’s a really neat and satisfying piece of worldbuilding which opens up so many potential storylines as well as relatable characters. An analogy that just struck me is you could perhaps think of Woerld as being like war torn Ukraine. Hell would then be Putin’s Russia, the oblivious-to-their-danger Earth would be played by Europe. Of course, the analogy breaks down when you realise that this geography casts America as Heaven!

Frohock’s Woerld is in constant need of Katharos, holy knights, to defend it (and by proxy defend Earth) against incursions from Hell. When the veil opens between Earth and Woerld one or two seemingly randomly selected youngsters are drawn on a hazardous journey from Earth into Woerld. They arrive there as ‘foundlings’ needing the guidance and support of a Katharos mentor while they come into their powers and assume the role of Katharos themselves. In some ways the relationship resembles that between a Jedi Knight and their Padawan. However, when Lindsay and her brother Peter are drawn into Woerld, there is no safe comfortable induction into some school-based training montage. Instead, they face immediate mortal danger and demonic enemies. Lucian – gripped by guilt and on the run (well on the limp) from two very different women who both have good reason to hate him – is hardly the omnipotent protector a foundling might want.

There is much to enjoy in Frohock’s worldbuilding. For example the structure in the magic system and one of my kindle notes is that “I’d like an RPG in this world” just after Lucian had given this explanation to Lyndsey.

“Magic isn’t as easy as whooshing. We have major and minor talents. For example. I’m a healer and an exorcist. I can also command the hell gates. Those are my major talents.”

The deals with the denizens of hell are more subtle than the straight trading of souls, instead Catarina – Lucian’s fallen sister – is willing to trade away parts of her humanity in exchange for power. That idea of surrendering emotions like compassion – and losing your humanity in the process – felt even more appropriate in the current geo-political context than it did ten years ago (and you can read what I thought ten years ago here  )

There is a grim feel to the story, with the characters in danger in a hostile environment where even the fauna seems poised to attack them, but Frohock’s writing is not without humour. For example, when Lyndsey is explaining her previous limited experience of religiosity to Lucian.

“Dad always called us C and E Episcopalians.”

“Church of England?”

“Christmas and Easter.”

The plot into which the reader (and Lyndsay) stumble is something of an in media-res. There is a years’ long history that has preceded our meeting Lucian – a crippled prisoner of his deranged sister, while his ex-lover has been left to battle her own demons (quite literally) and everybody – including Lucian – holds him to be the worst betrayer of his people and his faith. However, all the characters and establishment actions and reactions are wonderfully consistent with the world they inhabit and the backgrounds Frohock has given them. Their actions are logical responses to who and where they are, and that element of compulsion makes for an even more compelling story, not least in the embers of Lucian and Rachael’s great love.

“Lucian.” It was Rachael. He thought of smoke and honey and the memory of a summer night when she pressed her lips against his ear to moan his name.

They had never needed words to fill the empty spaces between them. Often they’d sat reading or watching the fire, as silent as a couple who’d spent their lives together.

I could tell you more of the plot – but suffice to say there’s danger, treachery, betrayal, guilt, grief and redemption, all wrapped up in glorious prose and richly imagined worldbuilding.  I enjoyed this revised version even more than the one ten years ago, and I enjoyed that one a lot!

Miserere: An Autumn Tale is available now from the following places:

Amazon US link | Amazon UK link | JABberwocky link