Whether it’s books or movies, sequels are always tricky – especially if the first one was a slam-dunk success. For that reason, even though we couldn’t wait to return to the weird and wonderful world of Rotherweird (look back on our review of that book and you’ll practically hear us squeaking with delight), we were a little apprehensive when Wyntertide fell through the door. Can Andrew Caldecott follow up on the first volume’s promise, or will this be one of those trilogies that goes a bit pear-shaped in the middle before the final volume adequately (or not) ties up all the loose ends?

We’ll tell you in a minute.

For the uninitiated, Rotherweird is a town that has been isolated from the rest of England for hundreds of years, ever since Elizabeth I granted it amnesty from the outside world. Nestled in a beautiful rural valley and populated by a fantastical cast of characters with intriguing and sometimes sinister talents, Rotherweird doesn’t recognise any history pre-1800 but, instead, seems to be combined of an uneasy mix of the gothic and the modern. It’s the kind of place that you’d love to visit as a tourist although the odds are high you wouldn’t make it out alive.

The good news is that things have settled down since the events of the first book. The bad news is that it’s the calm before the storm, and something vicious is returning from the past to destabilise Rotherweird’s reality. Could the clue to its identity lie in the rhymes the children are singing, predicting that Wynter is coming? If so, this isn’t the kind of winter that dressing up in a nice big coat and a warm scarf is going to counter. Because Geryon Wynter is terrifying enough to put even Voldermort on the naughty step, a dark sorcerer and necromancer who has been planning this comeback for centuries and is about to make Rotherweird’s Winter Equinox election something the townspeople will never forget… or survive.

So, is Wyntertide a worthy successor to the brilliant first novel? In our opinion, absolutely. In fact, mainly thanks to the very clever parallels Caldecott draws between his Rotherweird universe and the political chaos we’re currently experiencing in our ‘real world’ where bad things seem to be happening every day and we still never see them coming, we think it’s even better than the first book. It’s certainly far more labyrinthine and quite a bit nastier, but it’s seamlessly structured and reads at a galumphing pace, with a cliffhanger that’s left us in the same dilemma as last time – not being able to wait for the third book but worried it won’t be as good as this one (although, on the basis of Wyntertide, we doubt we’ve got anything to be concerned about.) Maybe, if we were going to be really picky, there might be a bit too much going on in this one – intrigues and rivalries seem to reproduce like Tribbles on the Enterprise, and so many strange names are flung at the reader from every direction that there were one or two moments when we had to take a breath and check the cast list before ploughing in again – but it would be a mad world to criticise an author who has created a universe this magical for forcing us to stop and think for a bit. As Wynter’s go, this is one cold snap that’s very welcome indeed.

WYNTERTIDE / AUTHOR: ANDREW CALDECOTT / PUBLISHER: JO FLETCHER BOOKS / RELEASE DATE: MAY 31ST