You may see this book billed as a sequel to MacLeod’s The Light Ages, but actually you could read them in any order. One may take place before the other, but this isn’t a continuation of a plot in the normal sequel sense, and there is a complete set of different characters.

Events in The House of Storms take place some time after those in The Light Ages. By now, the treatment of those adversely affected by Aether is more humane than previously. These so-called Changelings (or The Chosen, as they call themselves) are exiled to an estate in the South West of England called Einfell, where they’re allowed to live out their lives in relative comfort, though still isolated from the society they helped to build.

Consumptive Ralph Meynell is taken to the nearby estate of Invercombe by his powerful and wicked mother Alice, where he meets shoregirl Marion Price and falls in love. Their liaison is inconvenient to the ambitions Alice has for her now-recovered son, and she manipulates events so that Ralph loses Marion and Marion believes their son (Klade) was stillborn.

Alice Meynell is one of the great fictional villains; she has Hitler-like tendencies and starts a civil war, essentially, because the Bristol Post Office loses some of her mail and she has to queue at a cake shop.

As you’d expect from a fantasy novel, there is mystery and magic, but there is also a fully realised fictional world and a cast of fascinating characters. MacLeod, as he always does, takes great pains to tell the story, and his attention to detail is superb. He is surely one of the best writers around – in any genre. Highly recommended, along with anything else he’s written (look out for the novellas “The Summer Isles” and “Breathmoss”, for example).