The Conduit
An Everglenn Novel
A woman with deep ties to her family’s estate is pulled into intrigue surrounding it via prophetic dreams in the thoughtful fantasy novel The Conduit.
In Suzy Webb’s slow-moving fantasy novel The Conduit, a woman uncovers old secrets and magic powers while falling in love with an old friend.
Freya has a strong connection to Everglenn, the vast Canadian estate started by her great-grandmother. She even has occasional dreams about its history. In 2022, as she studies for a graduate degree in Belfast, she meets her landlady’s enigmatic son, Liam. Meanwhile, her dreams of home come more often and become more intense.
Freya begins to suspect that the dreams are visions, directing her to save Everglenn from mysterious circumstances. However, the book is vague and hypothetical when it comes to defining those threats, which hang without clear form over Freya’s head. The warnings do not come to fruition until late in the book, muting their ability to generate true suspense.
Freya is an uninvolving heroine. Too little is shared about her, and a clear sense of her personality is absent. More attention is given to her surroundings than to her own thoughts and feelings, save for when she experiences the visions of Everglenn. Vibrant depictions of nature are used to convey Freya’s love for the family estate, heightening the stakes when she discovers that it is imperiled. Still, Freya’s identity apart from Everglenn remains vague; she claims to love the outdoors and her dog, Koda, but even her studies revolve around her relationship to the family estate. Her love interest, Tobyn, is also underdeveloped beyond his connection to the estate, and he’s absent for long stretches of the book.
The story is slow moving. At first, it follows Freya’s time in Everglenn and then Belfast via long, detailed passages about the woodlands, college life, and daily routines. Scenes set in both locations include vague allusions to future concerns, but as these are not followed through on, they spark limited interest. Indeed, prior to Liam’s introduction, the book is light on intrigue, and it is not until Freya’s dreams become clearer and Liam calls her a conduit for the past that the book secures more involvement. Thereafter, bits of family lore slip in between everyday moments, their importance sometimes minimized. Later in the book, additional conflicts are introduced, followed by an abrupt cliffhanger ending.
In the musing fantasy novel The Conduit, a woman learns about the generations of women who preceded her on her lush family estate.
Reviewed by
Leah Block
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