A Tangle of Time (The Hexologists, #2) by Josiah Bancroft Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy mystery, gaslamp, urban fantasy, fantasy
Series: Hexologists #2
Pages: 416
Published by Orbit on September 9, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
From one of the most exciting and original voices in fantasy comes the second book following the adventures of the Hexologists, Iz and Warren Wilby, as they tackle a case that could redefine the nature of magic itself.
As the nation’s foremost investigators of the paranormal, Isolde and Warren Wilby are accustomed to bumping up against things that go bump in the night. They have made quite a name for themselves as the detectives of the uncanny, the monstrous, the strange. After a decade of wedded bliss and dozens of fantastical adventures, there is little in the world that can still surprise them.
But when a famous artist dies under suspicious circumstances, Isolde finds herself investigating a murder that may not have happened, and a crime scene that seems to shift beneath her feet. Not one to be easily thwarted, Isolde is compelled to take greater and greater risks in pursuit of her elusive answers. Meanwhile, the laws that govern magic appear to be breaking, and those cracks are spreading to the everyday world.
The mystery will carry the devoted duo to seedy underworlds, enchanted gardens, and subterranean military zoos. Old friends will come to the Wilbies’ aid as they infiltrate secret societies, battle vicious imps, and flee from a pack of venomous wolves. Equipped with Isolde’s hexes, Warren’s muscle, and an enchanted bag full of magical relics, the Hexologists will have to risk life and limb to unravel the riddle at the heart of A Tangle of Time.
My Review:
The Hexologists’ second outing (after last year’s titular series opener, The Hexologists) is full to the brim with ‘wibbly-wobbly, timey wimey bits’, but the only Doctor in sight is Dr. Isolde Wilby.
Iz’ Wilby’s doctorate is in hexology, and together, she and her husband Warren (AKA ‘War’) are the Hexologists of the series title. They are also, generally and pretty much always, in some sort of trouble.
Even if it’s a trouble they did not necessarily go looking for. They don’t have to, as trouble clearly already has their address and has no difficulty in finding them whenever it feels the need to involve them in a new ‘adventure’. Or yet another opportunity for Iz to rile up and piss off the patriarchal ‘powers that be’.
This time around, trouble comes calling in the form of a gigantic headache and a heaping helping of deja vu. Along with the catastrophe of their magical ‘portalmanteau’ suddenly becoming inaccessible. Which is really going to peeve the dragon living inside it!
In this quasi-Victorian, gaslamp, alternate fantasy world, magic and technology exist side-by-side. But magic is considered ‘old school’ and passe and unsophisticated, while technology is all the rage. Iz is often derided and denigrated because she’s considered a superstitious ‘finger-wiggler’ – meaning magic-user – as well as a delicate female always on the verge of hysterics. Which makes her angry as hell a great deal of the time as she’s almost always right but her ideas are never acknowledged until a man says the thing she’s been saying all along.
And isn’t that still always the way.
So the first time that time stutters, Iz doesn’t tell anyone that the world is suddenly different – except of course for her beloved (very, frequently and often) husband, War. While she searches both high and low, literally and figuratively, for whatever has caused the world to turn not quite right – and keep right on turning towards destruction.
What she finds is not at all what she expected. Because time has tangled beyond recognition, wrapped around the dark heart of someone she believed was a friend. In order to set things back on the right – or at least a survivable – course, she’ll have to turn back time and rewrite the world. If it’s possible. If she can.
If for once in her life she can find her OWN way forward instead of following in the footsteps of those who have gone before her. Because they haven’t. Yet.
Escape Rating A-: The title is a bit of a clue, as this story is very tangled indeed. It’s one of those stories where it’s difficult at the beginning to figure out where it’s going because the point of view character, in this case Iz, doesn’t know where it’s going or if it’s going and certainly not why it’s going.
She’s tangled and so are we. War, as always, is there to support Iz in whatever way he can. Including, if the situation calls for it, getting himself arrested right alongside her.
The situation DOES call for it. War isn’t even surprised about that. He’s always all in for whatever Iz is planning. Or not planning as the case may be and often, well, is.
The Hexologists’ world is very much a gaslamp world, but it also feels, not just different from our own but a bit askew from it. More than anything, this world reminds me of the polluted, corrupted, alternate New York City in the W.M. Akers’ Westside series, complete with sulfurous fog and equally sulfurous magic AND technology.
But there’s also more than a hint of Genevieve Cogman’s Invisible Library series, in the way that the story is not just playing with time but that it does not hold any time stream sacrosanct. There are no ‘fixed points’ in time. It’s possible to go back in time, make a mess of what was, and change what is – generally for the worse. Or at least for the weird. Which is definitely what happens in this story.
This is also one of those stories that relies on its singular voice. If you like Iz and the way she bullrushes through pretty much everything and everyone, you’ll enjoy the story. If she’s a turn off, then it won’t work. The dynamic between Iz and War is all the more interesting – and again, either refreshing or a complete turn-off depending – in the way that SHE is the protagonist and he is the support, helpmeet and very much her ‘beta’.
In the end, the title is a hint in multiple ways. Not only is the story about a literal tangle in time as well as magic, but the protagonists are also literally tangled up in that tangle, and the story itself tangles around them BECAUSE of that tangle. It reads almost like a collection of scenes and vignettes – because the tangled time is breaking the order of events – until at the end it all comes together and makes sense of the whole.
I had an initially confusing but ultimately grand time with this one. So I was very relieved when I turned the final page to see an announcement that (and I absolutely do quote), “The story continues in…Book Three of The Hexologists.” I’m looking forward to it.
