Magic, Romance, and Bicycle Chases in Witchmark, C.L. Polk’s Enchanting Debut

Witchmark is C.L. Polk’s debut, a graceful, smartly written novel set in Aeland, a lightly magical fantasy world modeled on post-WWI Britain. Miles Singer is a member of a powerful family of mages, destined to inherit wealth and considerable social power, who instead slipped the bonds of his noble blood to join the war effort. He became a doctor, and later faked his death in the hopes of making the break from his demanding family permanent. As the novel opens, Miles is living a peaceful life working at a veteran’s hospital—until a man who knows his real identity stumbles into his operating room and dies on his table from no obvious injury. Thus begins a tale of dark magic, intrigue, betrayal, and love. And, lest we forget, bicycle chases.

Miles thought he’d escaped his fate, and has done all he can to keep a low profile, choosing to work in an overcrowded, underfunded hospital caring for wounded soldiers who returned from the front lines of Aeland’s recently concluded war with neighboring Laneer deeply troubled. That his patients would suffer from post-traumatic stress and terrible dreams is to be expected; the fact that they also feel compelled to kill, and that a few of them have of late started snapping and murdering their entire families suggests that more than the wounds of war are to blame.

And then, that mystery man dies in front of Miles, and a handsome stranger named Tristan enters his life, and changes his world.

Miles can sense something is different about Tristan, and Tristan seems to know him for what he truly is—he can see Miles’ witchmarks, orbs of light that appear around the magically gifted and can only be seen by certain eyes—fae eyes. The young doctor soon falls for the jovial, enigmatic Tristan as they try and solve the murder together, and run into even greater intrigues, and ever-mounting danger on all sides: Miles is nearly killed when someone attacks him on his bicycle (Tristan adorably nurses him back to health), and worse still, is threatened with exposure and a life of servitude when an unlikely coincidence leads to Miles’ sister discovering he’s still alive.

With a family that wants to enslave him on one side and a mysterious enemy turning war veterans into brutal killers on the other, Miles and Tristan must work together to figure out how all of these events are connected, and watching them do so is delightful, despite the dark and deeply serious subject matter. As the plot unravels, the story turns suspenseful, moving, and romantic by turns. Polk manages scenes of breathless suspense the likes of which you don’t encounter often in fantasy (what’s the last novel you read that featured a truly heart-pounding bicycle chase?), but remains foremost concerned with character—the budding relationship between Miles and Tristan is the beating heart of the novel, and Miles’ slow acceptance of his affection for the man will quicken pulses just as quickly. Miles is both a shabby and befuddled and exceedingly capable protagonist, approaching both solving the murder and deducing his own feelings for Tristan with logic and pragmatism. Tristan is a sly and engaging romantic foil, sweet and sexy and a little bit dangerous, and constantly amused by Miles’ protestations when it comes to intimacy.

Witchmark is an outstanding debut, not only for its endearing characters and comfortably lived-in world, or its genre-hopping plotting, or its smart twisting of fantasy tropes, but because in bringing all of that together, it manages to do something we haven’t seen before—a rare feat in fantasy these days. The novel ends on a hopeful, if not entirely definitive, note. A pair of followups are on the way, and enchanted readers will no doubt be itching to read them.

Witchmark is available June 19.