Sameer Gudhate Presents the Book Review of Relics by Tim Lebbon

Some books don’t knock — they slip into your life like a whisper behind your ear. Relics was that kind of whisper for me, the kind that makes you turn around in a crowded café even though you know no one is there. I picked it up on an evening when the world felt a little too ordinary, a little too predictable, and within a few pages Tim Lebbon reminded me why I fell in love with fantasy and horror in the first place — because they crack open the mundane and let a little wild magic leak through.

Lebbon, known for the eeriness of Coldbrook and the addictive dread of The Silence, writes with the confidence of someone who understands shadows intimately. His worlds don’t feel “created”; they feel excavated, like he’s brushing dust off bones that were always there. Relics, the first in its trilogy, feels like an entrance — not just into a story, but into a hidden eco-system pulsing beneath London’s skin.

At the heart of the book is Angela Gough, a criminology student living with her charmingly mysterious fiancé, Vince. One morning, Vince simply… vanishes. Leaves a note. Leaves silence. Leaves Angela clutching questions she never imagined she’d have to ask. And when she begins looking for him, she’s not just trespassing into criminal territory — she’s stepping into a marketplace that buys and sells the remains of mythical creatures: satyrs, faeries, gryphons, ogres. The kind of things we loved as children and forgot to fear as adults.

But here, in Lebbon’s world, they’re not fairy-tale decorations. They bleed. They breathe. They bargain. They die.

What I loved — truly loved — is how Lebbon’s prose balances grit with wonder. The city feels damp, cold, lived-in… yet alive with a shimmer at the edge of vision, as though something is always about to emerge from a crack in the pavement. His writing is unfussy, almost sharp, and yet every now and then he drops a sentence that glows like bioluminescent ink. And the pacing — yes, it’s a slow simmer at first, but it’s the kind of slow that lets the dread steep. By the time the book shifts gears, you feel it in your pulse.

Angela herself is an interesting contradiction — strong but unravelling, determined but naïve, lovable yet flawed. She’s also maddening at times, stubbornly devoted to a man who hasn’t exactly been transparent. But perhaps that’s why her journey works: she behaves like a real person, messy, hopeful, blinkered by love. Vince, on the other hand, is the sort of character you think you understand until suddenly you don’t — and that ambiguity fuels much of the story’s tension.

What lingered for me long after the final page was not the creatures — though they’re wonderfully strange — but the humans. The collectors. The crime lords. The ones obsessed with ownership, with possession, with exploiting the magical simply because they can. In a world that still trades in horn, bone, skin, ivory, and anything that can be ripped from something living, the book’s metaphor is uncomfortable… and effective. It made me think of all the things that vanish in silence because someone found them profitable.

Lebbon plays with structure gently — shifting perspectives, weaving small glimpses into the Kin and their politics, the way their fractured society mirrors ours more closely than we’d like to admit. The escalation toward the climax feels inevitable, like walking down a staircase where each step creaks louder than the last. There’s action, yes, but also an emotional undercurrent that grows stronger as Angela uncovers the truth behind Vince’s disappearance.

The book is not flawless. The opening drags a bit, and Angela’s refusal to doubt Vince borders on frustrating. But once the story begins to uncoil, you’ll be grateful you held on. The reward is a world that feels both ancient and freshly cut open.

By the end, I found myself thinking about hidden worlds. About what survives in the cracks when no one is looking. About the kind of monsters, we create, and the kind we chase away. Relics made me look twice at alleyways, at things half-seen. It made London feel haunted in the best possible way.

If you crave urban fantasy that isn’t dipped in glitter but soaked in rain, blood, myth, and mystery — if you want horror that breathes, not jumpscares — if you want a story that feels like Neil Gaiman wandered into a crime den and brought Clive Barker as backup, pick up Relics. Let it whisper to you too.

Go on — step into the shadows. You might find something worth keeping.

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