PREDATORY NATURES

Trapped on a luxurious transcontinental train, a girl fights for her life against an ancient entity.

After a spell of difficulties, Londoner Lara Williams, who’s half Welsh and half English, is relieved to be starting a two-week off-season position on the luxury train the Banebury. Since her exams went poorly, she’s taking a gap year before university, so she can retake them. Welcome though the job is, she’s unsettled to find that her former friend Rhys, who’s Welsh, is also working on the train. Though they used to be close, they haven’t spoken in months. Among the small number of passengers on the trip from Cardiff, Wales, to Tallinn, Estonia, are wealthy Welsh siblings Gwendolyn and Gwydion Llewellyn, whose carriages are off limits to staff; scientist Gwen is transporting “organic samples” to Eastern Europe. The journey goes from odd (overnight, ivy vines grow rapidly, creeping across the floors of carriages, and Lara hears “soft and hypnotic, almost somnolent” whispering) to frightening (people are taken ill with terrifying plant-related maladies). Everything is seemingly connected to the mysterious Llewellyns. When Lara investigates, she finds a powerful presence from Welsh folklore, one with whom she has an unexpected connection. Weaving flashbacks to Lara’s relationship with a boyfriend who exercised coercive control over her into the developing situation on the train, this engaging, well-paced novel explores horrors both supernatural and very much of this world.

Dark, page-turning, folkloric horror.