[AN: sorry for the delay. I had this post all ready to go, and then I forgot to schedule it! Lol!]

A couple weeks ago, in my post about my recent Victorian historical fiction reading binge, I mentioned that I had read a book called Jackaby by William Ritter. Well, I’ve now finished the series (4 books), and thought I’d share a full series review.

I will try to avoid too many MAJOR spoilers, but as I am talking about the series as a whole there will probably be some.

As mentioned, the author is William Ritter (who has also written some middle-grade fiction that looks really great so I’ll probably check those out at some point!). I don’t believe the series as a whole has a name, but the four books are: Jackaby, Beastly Bones, Ghostly Echoes, and Dire King. There is a fifth standalone book coming out in August, called Rook, that I am very much looking forward to. But don’t go looking for the description of that book or you will run face-first into a couple major spoilers for the ending of book 4 (yes this happened to me).

The books take place in a Victorian-age New England city called New Fiddleham (cleverly avoiding any actual states or real cities/geographies). The main characters are Abigail Rook, an intelligent young woman who has recently run away from her home in England in search of adventure, and R.F. Jackaby, a paranormal investigator who becomes her employer. Each book is written in first-person from Abigail’s POV, in a style similar to John Watson reporting about the cases he worked on with Sherlock Holmes — including some amusing little nods to the trope throughout.

R.F. Jackaby is a Seer. In fact, he is THE Seer, as there is only one alive at any given moment. He has the capacity to see the supernatural elements of the world that are mostly invisible to or ignored by the human public. He uses this ability as an investigator in New Fiddleham, dealing with magical and unexplained issues while constantly butting heads with the police chief and the mayor. He lives in a house once owned by a woman who was murdered ten years ago and simply never left — he and the ghost are rather good friends, thankfully.

Abigail Rook is a smart, headstrong young woman who wanted to be an archeologist. Throughout the series she proves herself to be brave and capable and quite often the voice of reason when situations become dire. Her bravery is established pretty early on in her employment with Jackaby when she discovers that his last assistant was turned into a duck, and doesn’t immediately go running and screaming out of the house. Never mind the ghost!

In the first book, Jackaby, the world-building is established and Abigail and Jackaby solve a series of murders, as one does. They also befriend one of the cops, on whom Abigail develops a crush.

In the second book, Beastly Bones, Abigail is given an opportunity to stretch her archeology muscles a bit on a case out in the valley away from the city. The cop Abigail has a crush on, Charlie Barker, has been transferred out to the valley as well, allowing their flirtation to continue with growing adorable-ness (and Jackaby’s hilarious pleas that Abigail not rely on him for emotional or relationship advice). This book gets rather bloody in places, and the mystery of who is doing what to whom was fairly intricate.

[SPOILER BELOW]

There’s a freaking dragon involved! Sort of! It’s complicated!

[SPOILER ENDED]

The second book begins to hint at a larger conspiracy or plot hiding beneath the recent cases that Jackaby and Abigail have worked on. This is fleshed out more in the third book, Ghostly Echoes.

In Ghostly Echoes, Jackaby and Abigail are “hired” by their ghost friend, Jenny, to find out who murdered her. Unfortunately, what should be a relatively straightforward task for them becomes more and more complicated as the clues to Jenny’s murder ten years ago leads them all into the heart of a much larger, deadly plot. This book features a very-polite (but still deadly) vampire, a mad scientist, and a trip on the River Styx into death. And that’s not nearly a lot of it!

Where the first two books were fun jaunts into the murder mystery genre with some paranormal shenanigans thrown in, the third book leaps headfirst into Celtic folklore and epic fantasy. The fourth book, Dire King, then proceeds to shatter the quiet facade of the Victorian city and break into all-out magical war.

The fourth book was so tense and so action-packed I felt like I barely breathed through the entire thing! Despite a couple spoilers I had accidentally run into (while looking at the new book coming out in August), I did not actually know where the book was going for most of it. It goes heavy on the drama, in the best ways possible. I especially appreciated the way Abigail becomes the voice not only of reason but of mercy and goodness and “humanity at its best” throughout the fourth book. And the ending was so SO satisfying. (And there! I managed not to spoil any of the real major bits!)

One of the many things I liked about these books was the relationships. For one, I fully expected it to become a romance between Abigail and Jackaby, just because that tends to be the way these things go (not a complaint! I would have been fine with that as well!). But Ritter defied my expectations by pairing Abigail with the sweet cop, Charlie. (Was there a bit of copaganda, yeah, sure… but it’s such a standard character type in historical fiction and we all know it’s a fantasy anyway, so it didn’t really bother me.)

Another thing I really loved about these books was the absolutely impressive amount of research into folklore and mythology that Ritter had to have done to write these. There are dozens and dozens of references to so many creatures from folklore and mythology it almost boggles the mind! And not just the standard Western ones, though Celtic mythology gets the main focus in the last two books, but also Asian and African as well.

A third of the many things I loved about these books was how truly FUNNY they were. The plots are dark, there’s murder, there’s an attempt to conquer the world in the last book, but despite this (or even because of it) there is a wonderful humor that threads its way through the entire series. Jackaby is deadpan and drily sarcastic (one of my favorite character types), and the interactions between Jackaby and Abigail are one of the major highlights of the whole series.

The whole series was a delight from start to finish. I thoroughly enjoyed all four books, but especially the last one. I cannot wait to read the new one, Rook, coming out in August. What’s even better is that the whole series is getting a reprint in August. I read the books by borrowing the ebooks from the library. And there are ebook and print versions available on Amazon. I think they were self-published, or perhaps indie-published by a small press. But either way, they are getting a new printing with brand new cover art at the same time as the release of the fifth book.

Ironically enough, it was the new cover art that first got me to read these. I follow the artist doing the new covers, Corey Brickley, online. I love his work (seriously go check him out!). He posted the cover reveal for Jackaby with his new artwork and a brief description of the book and I knew it would be right up my alley (I mean! Compare the cover at the top of the post, with the rest of the covers in the post!). But I probably would not have ever run across them if Corey Brickley had not been commissioned to do new covers! It’s so funny how the world works sometimes…

Anyway, I highly recommend these books. As mentioned, they are available to purchase right now in ebook or paperback. Or you can do like I did, and borrow them from the library so that you can buy the NEW covers in August without ending up with two whole sets.