Drowned Country (Hugo Astounding Award for Best New Writer)

"A little over two years have passed since the end of Silver in the Wood, the first book in Emily Tesh’s Greenhollow duology. Although that book ended on a hopeful note—with Henry Silver coming into his newly acquired powers and Tobias Finch finally learning to love again—the sequel begins with despair. Silver lives alone in Greenhollow Hall while his former lover has left him to fight monsters with Silver’s mother Adela. As Silver mourns and wallows, Tobias flourishes with independence and productivity.

Right in the middle of a powerful sulk, Silver’s mother arrives with a task. Adela suspects Maud Lindhurst of Rothport, a harbor town shrouded in fog and lined with “crooked houses” and “foul-smelling sand,” is the victim of a local vampire. She and Tobias need someone in his magical weight class, so to speak, because the bloodsucker is more than they can comfortably manage on their own. Silver agrees, partly because he can’t refuse his mother and partly because he’s desperate to see Finch again. Below the ruins of the old abbey where the vampire nested lie the bones of what once was the farthest edge of Silver’s Hallow Wood. What Henry and Tobias find there is not what they expect, and leads to a world that might never let them go."

- Alex Brown, tor.com