What Would You Do To Discover Your Heart’s Desire?

Greton of Willow is in a spot of bother. Caught in the act while escorting a family of elves to safety, Greton flees for greener pastures with only his scant magic and brilliant mind to his name.

And a question. The question.

‘What is your heart’s desire?’

A life-long outsider, Greton sets out to uncover what lies at the centre of his heart. Is it adopting a tawny owl? Owning his very own map shop? Forging a found family with others as similarly scorned as himself? The possibilities are endless. Determined to put his marvellous mind to the task, Greton discovers a way to reveal anyone’s heart’s desire, but not everyone’s longings are as pure as his…

Something odd is occurring in Greton’s new home of Barrow’s Hill, and, before long, the old man in search of a comfortable new life finds himself swept up in danger and mischief.

A heart-felt, cozy, neurodivergent adventure filled with found family and an elderly autistic hero searching for his place in the world, ‘Magic, Maps, and Mischief’ is a story built on love, friendship and acceptance, perfect for readers of ‘Legends and Lattes’, ‘The Teller of Small Fortunes’ and ‘Under The Whispering Door’.

I picked up a copy of this book from the author at Bristolcon 2025 and then, seeing it had been entered in SPFBO11 I thought I’d wait to maybe review it as a finalist. However, with phase 1 SPFBO coming to an end and Maps, Magic and Mischief not getting the finalist nod from its pool of 30 books, I figured it was an opportune moment to give it a  read and see how far it had taken the Cosy subgenre label on from the trail blazing Legends and Lattes.

Green sets out his stall as a teller of cosy fantasy with a neurodivergent cast from the outset and this delivers exactly that kind of feel of a protagonist settling into a new life discovering a diverse friendship group while dodging an element of peril and mystery that challenges the characters and intrigue the reader.

We meet our protagonist Greton in the middle of a raid that he has been conscripted into, where he has a decision to make about whether or not to shield a family of ‘elves’ that are the targets of discrimination, persecution and enslavement in his native island nation of Haltveldt. Greton is an aged and only moderately talented magician, known as sparkers in Haltveldt, who is temporarily working under a malevolent sparker taskmaster. The decision he comes to forces him into flight from his comfortable life and the familiarity of his carefully arranged study and brings him to the continental shores of Velen.

Velen is more accepting of difference than Haltveldt and consequently has been a refuge to many elves from Velen, while the unexplored hinterlands of the continent offer opportunities for adventurers to garner fame and wealth. However, Velen is not without its issues, with bandits on the road and burglaries in the city of Barrow’s Hill.

Green’s magic systems draw on elemental ideas but without delving into the specifics with any kind of Sanderson precision. Of more significance is the magic that Greton imbues his cartography inks with, creating maps that are not just works of art but also splendidly animated or even deeply revealing as our protagonist pursues the answer to his own ultimate question (of life, the universe and everything) ‘What is your heart’s desire.’

Perhaps in keeping with the protagonist’s unworldliness, the higher politics and economics of Vellen and Haltveldt go largely unremarked unless they impinge directly on Greton’s thoughts and affairs. The guild of cartographers are chastised for their inaccuracies, the guild of mages for their interference, the local emporiums for the limitations of their supplies, as we find ourselves very much caught up in Greton’s obsessions with maps and tea. Nonetheless one gets a pleasing sense of place and people, not least in the shop lined street of Barrow’s Snug which has the feel of Yorks medieval shopping street The Shambles.

Green’s prose is a great strength of the book. My kindle notes are peppered with ‘nice line’ asides and he delivers lovely, lush descriptions and sharp observations such as this on Greton’s ease of distraction

For a time Greton stood lost in thought. Like a rambling mansion with many hidden rooms, it was easy for him to get lost within his own mind.

Or this when contemplating the difficulties of dealing with ‘other people’

Simply put the old man didn’t see the point of beating about the bush when it came to talking, and preferred to get straight into it. But ‘other people’ usually didn’t. They liked to warm up to a topic, to dance around it with many words of little importance, before sidling up to a subject with meat on its bones.

A bit like the magic system, the plot carries a certain vagueness. There are bad people in Velen as in Haltveldt and they pose challenges to the wealth and future security of Greton and his new friends. There twists are not so sharp as to ever unseat the reader, but the plot still maintains an intriguing level of threat beneath the more gently entertaining journey of discovery that Greton makes into the desires of his own and his friends’ hearts.

There is an issue around the representation of difference in speculative fiction – in that it should be normal to be different. The existence of ‘other’ ethnicities, sexualities, gender identities and neurotypes should never be an extraordinary circumstance. Difference should never be a bolt on attribute to tick a box, but neither should it be a plot device where the entirety of the story is about the struggles that arise from the protagonist’s ‘otherness’. At the same time, if the character’s otherness does not emerge through who they are and how they react in the book, then what have we written except an ordinary person with a stick-on label?

Green, skilfully navigates that condundrum with Greton’s neurodivergence wholly but sympathetically embedded in the telling and unfolding of the story. The writing captures the travails of Greton’s autism in ways that can echo and resonate with readers wherever they or their friends might find themselves along the spectrum. (And to be fair there is a saying I am reminded of “if you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person.” Divergence has no ‘typical’)

Writing as an autistic person, Green captures the character’s struggle with social interactions.

She tried to peer into his bright blue eyes. Like all Sparkers, Greton’s were more radiant that those of the unmagical, but he refused to meet her gaze, and fixed his attention on the tip of her nose instead. He and eye contact had long since given up on each other.

the exhaustion of masking,

So many people would complain about his ways, so he’d hide them, even though the only remedy afterwards would be to sit in a pitch-black room with his head buried beneath a pillow until Greton could bear to try again.

yet also the particular strengths of perception and recall.

A path once walked remained rooted in the old man’s memory, and only a compass might boast a greater sense of direction.

It is perhaps no coincidence that my favourite character after Greton himself is his friend, landlady and neighbour Aria of ‘Aria’s Fine Teas and Equally Fine Fancies’ whose own easily distracted neurodivergence makes it almost impossible to pin her down to a particular line of thought or action unless it be her fondness for the proprietor of the book shop across the road.

There is, in the found family that assembles around Greton, something of the animals of the Hundred Acre Wood, in that Pooh and Piglet and the authors have an uncomplicated fondness for each other and their idiosyncrasies, not least of whom is Eeyore who – despite being deeply depressed is always included and never told to ‘just cheer up’.

At a time when a wedge of political populism is being ruthlessly driven into the crevice of every kind of differences and otherness, there is a message in Maps, Magic and Mischief which goes deeper than ‘just’ being a warm cosy story. That must be why this is perhaps my favourite line in the book.

She might not understand him – not many did – but she accepted him, which was as fine a gift as any.