The Lost Child of Lychford, Paul Cornell
Received to review via Netgalley
I was a little worried I wouldn’t remember enough about the first novella to follow all of this, but I quickly cottoned on again. The characters were fairly memorable, after all, particularly Judith — her cantankerous practicality was as fun and refreshing this time round as last. I felt like that character had a little less screen time, so to speak, while the Reverend Lizzie had more, but it did make sense in the context of the story — Lizzie is really the key figure in the plot, this time. If there are other novellas to come, I’d guess they’d focus on whichever character is more central to the plot.
It does pick up on some interesting threads from the first book, too, like Judith’s husband and what exactly is going on there. It resolves things a little more, as well.
My quibble would be that I saw the problems sooner than the characters — as soon as the couple who wanted to get married on Christmas Eve were mentioned, I wondered — and that it isn’t so fun to read something where characters are out of their own control for much of the story. If that section had been shorter, I might have enjoyed it more.
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