Oak King Holly King

By: Sebastian Nothwell

Narrated by: Gary Furlong

Shrike, the Butcher of Blackthorn, is a legendary warrior of the fae realms. When he wins a tournament in the Court of the Silver Wheel, its queen names him her Oak King - a figurehead destined to die in a ritual duel to invoke the change of seasons. Shrike is determined to survive. Even if it means he must put his heart as well as his life into a mere mortal’s hands.

Wren Lofthouse, a London clerk, has long ago resigned himself to a life of tedium and given up his fanciful dreams. When a medieval-looking brute arrives at his office to murmur of destiny, he’s inclined to think his old enemies are playing an elaborate prank. Still, he can’t help feeling intrigued by the bizarre-yet-handsome stranger and his fantastical ramblings, whose presence stirs up emotions Wren has tried to lock away in the withered husk of his heart.

As Shrike whisks Wren away to a world of Wild Hunts and arcane rites, Wren is freed from the repression of Victorian society. But both the fae and mortal realms prove treacherous to their growing bond. Wren and Shrike must fight side-by-side to see who will claim victory - Oak King or Holly King.

©2022 Kenneth Henry (P)2024 Kenneth Henry

So good

Adding to my list of all time favorites. Great story and great romance. 5/5

Fantastic Fantasy

What an incredible tale wherein 1800’s London has a mushroom fairy ring connecting the human and fae worlds!
It’s not only well written, characters fully developed, fantasy woven perfectly with human reality, but it’s a generously long book! Many authors today would have broken the book into parts, each of which must be purchased separately.
Gary Furlong is a fabulously sexy velvety and beautifully performed narrator. I have rarely looked for books based on the narrator, but I discovered this book by searching for his narrations.
I didn’t let much life stuff get in the way of listening to this book.

Amazing

To be honest I purchased this out of curiosity to try and see what it was like.
And while I did skip out on a few chapters, given that I was reading it to sleep, this story did amazingly

Well, I am a stickler for the romance, the full story was beautifully done I loved everything. And the queen was such a bitch, i wanted to cut her heart out and she had one

A Heartfelt Tale of Unexpected Pleasures

I was originally drawn to this story by its cover, one in which the two depicted characters that vaguely resembled Tom Sturridge and Ferdinand Kingsley’s characters of Netflix’s ‘The Sandman,’ a pair of actors which I have since been utterly besotted with after watching their performance together. I was further drawn in by the premise of a romance between a fae warrior and an unsuspecting clerk of Victorian London. At the time I learned about the book, the audio production had not yet been released to wider markets, only available to Kickstarter backers for a little while. So I resigned myself to wait for a wider release… and was not disappointed.

To start, though I have not heard any of Gary Furlong’s previously narrated works, he was a perfect choice for this one. His phrasing and cadence in narration are well suited to the setting, and each character voiced are well and truly distinct from one another; personality given form through performance. Though, I am sure that while Gary’s performance does these characters a great justice in their variety and distinction, the wide cast of human and fae folk alike of course would not exist at all without being brought to life through the words of Sebastian Nothwell.

And then of course the story itself surprised me, though not through any twist or turn of the plot, but with the seemingly effortless speed that Wren and Butcher’s relationship quickly evolves with not but a few chapters in. Their first kiss is consuming and titillating in a manner that caught me off guard, as did the deeply intimate ritual that followed not long after. But, none of the sex scenes put me off at all. Quite the opposite, in fact. Nothwell paints such scenes of heated intimacy with a delicate but precise hand. The phrasing is blunt, yet evocative, and none of these such scenes overstay their welcome or feel out of place over the course of this tale. Nor do they encompass the entirety of Wren and Butcher’s relationship. There too Nothwell gifts them the grace to grow into their love as it follows a refreshingly natural course.

I will not spoil how it ends, and the minutiae of the story itself is best experienced in the listening (or reading) of it, but I can say that this story has quite cemented itself as one of my favorites. I have no doubt it is one that I will return to time and time again, and I can think of no higher honor for a story than that.

I don’t even read fantasy and I could not have loved this book more.

I discovered Nothwell when I read Mr Warren’s Profession which I thought was the best example of class difference I’d ever read in HR. I enjoyed his writing style so much I decided to give this a try… even though I seldom read the genre. It was perfection. From the world building to the character arcs, I loved everything about it. The narration brought this already beautiful story to life from the first page to the last. One of my favorite reads of the year!