Rachael King (1) (1970–)

Set in New Zealand but really deals with ancient English myths. Ella curses the local bully on the bus home to her remote farm on the edge of the marshes and lakes. That evening she sees a huge black horse in the mist and the boy she cursed disappears.
Over the next few days Ella joins the search parties looking for him, meets a strange attractive young man and wonders if the local townsfolk are right about her family as the men like her father have also vanished; was he cursed by her mother?

There are some great scenes in this book, like when the huge horse “tempts” people to ride it and they can’t dismount. When the horses run amok during the local show and steal the children…

However, I found the transfer of the mythology from Great Britain to the country of New Zealand really hard to cope with. I think the author should just have set the book in England as it would have had more authenticity and lent more weight to the fantasy.… (more)

A novel with the common theme of The White Man entering a primal jungle and finding himself succumbing to his primal instincts. This one is a bit different. The protagonist Thomas, loves butterflies. I mean he really loves butterflies "When he caught sight of his first Morphos, their blue wings shining in the sun like stained glass, he felt a familiar stirring in his trousers. This was something he couldn't explain and had long ago given up trying to. Ever since he was a young lad, his body had occasionally--only occasionally--reacted this way to the excitement of spotting and catching butterflies."… (more)

An entertaining read, and with clever literary allusions and a twist at the end. My only issue, and this is only an issue for a biologist like me, were the biology mistakes.
• Huia don't have iridescent feathers and red wattles; their feathers are matt black and their wattles orange.
* There are issues with the names of specimens from the vantage point of the late 19th century, Zamenis hippocrepis wasn't in the genus Zamenis in the 1890s, isn't white, and isn't found in Egypt. Dipsas dendrophila hasn't been in that genus since the 1850s. Cithaerias aurorina wasn't so named until 1910.
* Magpie Hall is named after the Australian magpies that hang around the house, but the cover and interior illustrations are of (totally unrelated and very different-looking) European magpies. The climax of the novel is a group magpie attack (a la The Birds) in April, but only nesting pairs attack, and they nest around September.
So, for those who don't suffer from biology pedantry, I'd recommend this.… (more)