Nine Goblins is a delightfully silly novel with a joltingly dark theme about a cohort of goblins who get caught on the wrong side of the Goblin War after a mage’s spell goes awry. They stumble across Sings-To-Trees, the frequently beleaguered elf who deals with the local fauna’s veterinary needs. When they realise something isn’t right in the forest, the Whinin’ Niners and Sings-To-Trees team up to get to the root of the problem and end up biting off a bit more than they can chew. 

If you’re constantly on the hunt for fantastic goblin representation in books like I am, this one is an absolute treat. The Whinin’ Niners are an eclectic and disgustingly endearing group of goblins who compliment food through insults, like their tea thick enough to hold a spoon upright, and really, really don’t want to have to make any kind of important decision ever. Sergeant Nessilka is our main character, long-suffering leader of the Whinin’ Niners, and the unfortunate somebody who has to make the important decisions. As someone who used to teach in a primary school, I deeply resonated with how often she needed to ask her soldiers to remove their fingers from various orifices, to stop panicking, and how she gentle-parented them into doing their jobs and generally not dying. 

Sings-To-Trees is essentially the forest’s Snow White but with considerably more bodily fluids involved and a seemingly unending well of patience. He befriends trolls (who are just big babies and exceedingly helpful) and racoons (menaces) and excessively creepy bone creatures (unnerving) and anything else that turns up on his door needing help. Including clumsy goblins. He can’t help but help people in need, so when a series of odd disappearances come to his attention via the exceedingly lost goblins, he leaves his cottage in the woods to poke his nose into someone else’s business for a change.

Nine Goblins is another classic Kingfisher mix of cosy comedy and startling horror with utterly bizarre scenes that are guaranteed to startle a reader into laughter (please see the beginning of chapter three, trigger warning: unicorns) or wonder which page they turned wrong to end up in a scene quite that dark. 

Nine Goblins is available now, you can order your copy on Bookshop.org