‘SPARKLES LIKE UNEARTHED TREASURE’ KALIANE BRADLEY
‘A MESMERISING NOVEL’ OBSERVER
‘AN IRIDESCENT CONTEMPORARY FOLKTALE’ LUCY ROSE
In 2018, a young forensic scientist, homesick and adrift in the North of England, is heading to a coroner’s office to identify a body. But this body, found in a moss-layered bog, is not like any Agnes has seen before: its bones prove it was buried more than two thousand years ago, yet it is almost perfectly preserved.
Soon Agnes is drawn into a mystery from the distant past: the death of an Iron Age queen more like her than she knows. Along the way, she must contend with numerous groups who want to profit from the bog and activists who demand that the land be left undisturbed. Meanwhile, underfoot, there’s the land itself: the wet, teeming colony of moss has its own dark stories to tell.
As Agnes becomes tangled in controversies stirred up by her own discovery, she must face the deep history of what she has unearthed. In Bog Queen, the lives of two young women separated by many centuries become inextricably connected, as each learns to harness their strange strengths in a landscape more mysterious than either can imagine.
‘A MESMERISING NOVEL’ OBSERVER
‘AN IRIDESCENT CONTEMPORARY FOLKTALE’ LUCY ROSE
Rich, wild and shimmering with mystery, Bog Queen is the new novel from Anna North, bestselling author of Reese’s Book Club Pick Outlawed
In 2018, a young forensic scientist, homesick and adrift in the North of England, is heading to a coroner’s office to identify a body. But this body, found in a moss-layered bog, is not like any Agnes has seen before: its bones prove it was buried more than two thousand years ago, yet it is almost perfectly preserved.
Soon Agnes is drawn into a mystery from the distant past: the death of an Iron Age queen more like her than she knows. Along the way, she must contend with numerous groups who want to profit from the bog and activists who demand that the land be left undisturbed. Meanwhile, underfoot, there’s the land itself: the wet, teeming colony of moss has its own dark stories to tell.
As Agnes becomes tangled in controversies stirred up by her own discovery, she must face the deep history of what she has unearthed. In Bog Queen, the lives of two young women separated by many centuries become inextricably connected, as each learns to harness their strange strengths in a landscape more mysterious than either can imagine.
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Reviews
Bog Queen offers something for true crime fans as well as ancient history buffs . . . The mystery unfolds in two timelines, interspersing Agnes' fascinating investigation and the environmental and ethical issues it raises with the story of the Iron Age people who once traversed the same land
A memorable tale of the unexpected linkages of history, land and female power. North widens her range with this layered mystery-meets-ancient-history mashup
With rich, elegiac prose, Anna North's Bog Queen travels between modern day England and the druidic order of Celtic Europe to ask what we owe the past, the earth and, ultimately, each other. A book of magic and healing
Piercing . . . Part of the novel's thrill comes from the way in which North leaves the rest of the mystery for the reader to piece together . . . North reaches new heights with this brilliant novel
Bog Queen is a story I won't soon forget: exquisitely observed and filled with details about moss, druids, and dead bodies I wasn't aware I needed to know (but am now pleased to). Daring, delightful, and moving, this novel should be required reading for all of us facing a changing climate and uncertain future. I loved being inside Anna North's curious, compassionate perspective; I'll follow her anywhere, and to any time
A lightning strike of a novel by a visionary storyteller. Bog Queen is an earthly meditation; a page-turning mystery; and a tale of power, profit, and dominion as old as time. Anna North is simply brilliant
Bog Queen is an iridescent contemporary folktale, steeped with peat, memory and myth. Its writing shimmers with strange beauty, perfect for those who crave the haunting stories the earth remembers for us
A beautifully rendered tale that spans two millennia of history and centres on two very different women and their relationship with the marshes of this provincial English town . . . Thrilling
To this resonant mystery, Anna North brings a timely exploration of power, landscape and deep time, building a mesmerising novel
Wise, beautifully written, and transcendent in feeling, Bog Queen is exactly the kind of novel I love. North deftly weaves between the past and present to show us the complicated and far-reaching web that connects us all through time and space
I can't remember the last time a novel so moved and transfixed me. Bog Queen is infused with a profound wisdom about human ambition across the millennia - how enormous it has been, and also how insignificant - that seems to transcend human understanding, as if delivered by the old gods themselves. An absolute astonishment
A page-turning mystery and a graceful, sincere evocation of internal and external power struggles in changing worlds, from Roman Britain to a climate-broken UK. Bog Queen sparkles like unearthed treasure
Two dauntless women, centuries apart, find themselves coping with shifting alliances in the changeable territory of northern England. The dual timelines unspool the stories of an awkward forensic scientist named Agnes and a young Druid priestess, whose beautifully preserved body becomes the focal point of an involving drama, as contemporary ecological woes interweave with the mysteries of the past in a mossy, seemingly sentient terrain
A remarkably crafted tale that asks important questions about the imprint we leave on our loved ones, our culture, and our land