The Witch Below the Dreaming Wood by H.G. Parry is a 448 page standalone novel to be published July 21, 2026 by Redhook.

Genre

Historical Fantasy, Retelling

Description

From the author of The Magician’s Daughter comes a captivating historical fantasy where dreams come to life and Arthurian legends are reborn.

Wales, 1941. As the second world war ravages the globe and bombs fall from the sky, people all over the world begin to dream of King Arthur. The dreams spread like a fantastical plague, flooding people’s sleep night after night. Whispers arise of wonders and unexplained sights – dragons in the London Underground, and strange lights over Stonehenge. Self-proclaimed prophets claim they are miracles, heralding Arthur’s return at the time of Britain’s greatest need.⁣
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Elaine Ambrose has never dreamed of Arthur, and she doesn’t believe in miracles. A librarian at the British Museum, she wants only to protect the museum’s collection from the Blitz, and is frustrated to be sent instead to catalogue a reclusive professor’s private library on the coast of North Wales. But all is not as it seems. Soon Ellie must confront what she’s tried to ignore: she dreams not of Arthur, but of Nimue – the Lady of the Lake. And her dreams promise not salvation, but a return to the darkness of the last days of Camelot. 

Opening Line

When we were children under the Lake, my other would tuck us into bed every night with the same words.

My Thoughts

“That’s the trouble with destiny, and with despair. Both make it too easy to tell yourself you had no choice.”

The Witch Below the Dreaming Wood is an Arthurian legend love story that transcends space and time.

The tale unfolds in chapters that alternate between Nimue’s story (told in the first person POV), and that of Elaine Ambrose (third person), a librarian working in London during the second World War. As their nation is embroiled in warfare, the people of the United Kingdom collectively begin dreaming about the once and future king, Arthur. Is the phenomenon spreading by the power of suggestion on the minds of a stressed population, or is there actually something otherworldly afoot?

It was as though the incendiaries had cracked open the earth and allowed something old and primal to slip through.

At first, Ellie resents being sent away from where she can be of most use to the war effort in order to catalogue the library of an isolated manor house in the north of Wales. But events at her new lodgings lead her to believe that Camlan House might in fact have a much bigger role to play in looming world-shattering events than she could have imagined. She teams up with the estate’s groom, honorably discharged RAF pilot Tom Wilder, to try to puzzle out what is behind the unearthly goings-on they witness there.

Both parts of the story were excellent, but I especially delighted at Nimue’s narration of how she was raised by the Lady of the Lake to be Merlin’s doom. Her entire life has been solely about preparing to enact her mother’s vengeance against the mighty wizard and advisor to the king in Camelot through subterfuge, never mind how Nimue herself might come to feel for the man.

Oh, the joy the repartee between Nimue and Merlin brought to me!

“As it stands, I owe you an apology, and probably an explanation. I don’t have an explanation for you, but would you like to learn how to turn into a mouse?”

“I’d better get going. I promised Arthur I’d join him in council.”

“I thought you said you were going to be completely useless this morning.”

“I never promised him I wouldn’t be useless. I never even promised him I’d be awake. I did promise him I’d be human, which is a shame, but he’s learned to be specific over the years.”

And of course we also have the other usual suspects in this part of the tale: Morgan le Fay and Mordred, Queen Guinevere and Sir Lancelot.

Poor Lancelot. So brave and so honourable, so determined to be all things to all people that he was constantly hurting them in the process… “He can’t turn aside from Arthur, and he can’t turn aside from you, and so he’s going to tear himself apart trying to be everything to both of you at once, and deep down he can’t believe that it will end badly.”

If he could be the best knight in the world while betraying his liege lord, then it meant that knighthood wasn’t what he had believed it to be. It meant that perhaps his standards meant nothing, and never had. It meant everything was falling apart.

Both strands of story weave together epically at the end. There is no time loop here, but if “timey-wimey” plots hurt your brain too much to enjoy a book, you might want to skip this one. However, if you love fantasy stories inspired by Arthurian legend, WWII historical fiction, and grand wistful romances all packaged together with strong moral lessons, you must give this a read!

It will end one day, of course. Everything does. Until then, we have the ground we hold against the dark, and the stories we fill it with.

A thousand thanks to Redhook and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my unbiased review.