A- #BookReview: Nightshade and Oak by Molly O’Neill

Nightshade and Oak by Molly O'Neill
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy, historical fantasy, mythology, retellings
Pages: 288
Published by Orbit on February 3, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

An Iron Age goddess must grapple with becoming human in this delightful historical fantasy of myth and magic from the author of the instant hit Greenteeth.
When Malt, the goddess of death, is accidentally turned into a human by a wayward spell, she finds she's ill-equipped to deal with the trials of a mortal life.
After all, why would a goddess need to know how to gather food or light a fire?
Trapped in a body that's frustratingly feeble, she's forced to team up with Bellis, warrior daughter of Boudicca on a perilous journey across Roman-occupied Britain to the afterlife to try to restore her powers. As animosity turns to attraction, these two very different women must learn to work together if they are to have any hope of surviving their quest.

My Review:

The Nightshade AND the Oak of this historical/mythical retelling met on the fringes of a battle that was already lost, the end of a war that was passing into myth and legend even as they contended over the last bits of it.

The location, at least, is fitting for them both. The Nightshade is Mallt-y-Nos, a shadowy figure out of Welsh mythology, a chooser of the slain who would have kept good company with the Morrigan and the Valkyries.

The battle just lost – or won depending on one’s point of view – was the last battle in Boudica’s bloody rebellion against the Romans who stole her land, oppressed her people, and broke their oaths and raped her and her daughters as well as the lands they once held sacred.

The Romans are in their rapacious ascendancy, the rebellion that would have turned the tide of history has been put down in blood, and Boudica is dead. Her younger daughter is on the brink of that same state. Which is the point where Mallt-y-Nos comes to release the soul of Cati, princess of the Iceni, to the Afterlife.

But Belis, the older daughter of Boudica and the Oak of the Iceni, has other plans. Or rather, Belis, in her desperation to save something of her family and herself, has been playing with magic that she really does not understand or control. In her desperation, she has perverted the natural flow of magic in the world – and quite possibly, but entirely unwittingly, saved it.

Escape Rating A-: This was really good, but it was also really sad, and I think that’s reflected in the rating. I picked this up because I adored the author’s debut, Greenteeth, and I was hoping for more of the same. Which I mostly got, BUT, really big huge BUT here, while Greenteeth’s magical quest walked through some very dark places and had some equally dark potential outcomes, in the end it doesn’t actually go to those places and the reader ends the story with a smile of wonder.

Nightshade & Oak starts in a dark place and ends in tragedy. Maybe not as big a tragedy as it could have, but the ending is still sad. It’s also the right ending, it’s as good as this situation can get, but that doesn’t make it a happy ending. I didn’t expect one, but I was still plenty sad about it when I finished.

If Grace Curtis’s Idolfire had a book baby with the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice midwifed by the trend of fantasy/mythic retellings from formerly ignored perspectives, it would be this book. Nightshade & Oak is a historical fantasy, set at the end of Boudica’s rebellion, told from the combined perspectives of one of Boudica’s daughters and a figure out of Welsh myth. It casts the Romans as the villains – which they absolutely were from a Briton’s perspective however Western history might paint them.

The story in Nightshade & Oak is a magical quest story as Greenteeth was. When it begins, both Mallt and Belis think they’re going to take a trip to the Underworld to bring back the soul of Belis’ sister. But the quest has already gone pear-shaped. Part of Belis’ mis-use of magic has taken Mallt’s supernatural powers. She’s just a human. Actually less than ‘just’ a human because she’s utterly clueless about being merely human and resents Belis at every turn even as she rails at her own weakness and everything around her.

Belis is hiding a huge secret, and she takes her fear and guilt out on Mallt. But they are all each other has got to get them through this, so their romance seems both inevitable and doomed. Only because it is – as long as they manage to get themselves out of the mess that Belis’ panicked single-mindedness AND Mallt’s blithe overconfidence have gotten both their land and themselves into.

In the end, I had some mixed feelings about Nightshade & Oak, but those are mostly my own. It’s a fascinating take on history and myth and historical myth and I was absolutely there for that part. (In my head I’m drawing parallels between the Romans’ magical attacks on Britain and Hitler’s attempts at the same and I’d personally love to go down that rabbit hole…) The magical quest reminded me a LOT and with fondness of both Greenteeth and Idolfire between the darkness of the places it has to go through, the lengths they need to go to in order to resolve everything that needs resolution as much as it can be. The romance between Mallt and Belis also follows the same sad but inevitable course as the romance in Idolfire, but the characters do know that’s where they’re headed and they know it’s necessary. It’s just not what I wanted to happen.

In short, Nightshade & Oak is a terrific historical fantasy retelling that makes me wish there were more such books about Boudica and her daughters, so I hope one or more authors pick up on that. But it’s also not a book to read if you NEED an escape with a happy ending, because this doesn’t, and more importantly shouldn’t, have one. Dammit.

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