Louis Song is completing his last year of high school in Edinburgh. His world revolves around achieving academic excellence and acceptance to a top university. For Louis, his grades mean everything. But self-doubt and exhaustion plague him as he often studies into the early hours of the morning.
Annwfn is the mystical name of the Celtic Otherworld. It is also the name of Louisâs friend, Anne Engliesin. Anne is brilliant; top of their year, she makes getting perfect grades look easy. And like Louis, who is Scottish-Asian, she too is different, keeping secret that her father was among a group of survivors who escaped the Otherworld and who now make their lives in modern Edinburgh. Her mumâs a native Scot, but her father is a descendant of a mythical people.
An Otherworld demon now seeks to destroy the remaining survivors, and this includes Anne. Icelos, or âIceâ is the personification of nightmares. Only Louis, with his intellect and true heart, has what it takes to protect his friends. But what Louis doesnât realise is that, in saving the lives of his friends, his stature against the evil of the world grows until his life becomes the greatest prize of all.
Louis Song is completing his last year of high school in Edinburgh. His world revolves around achieving academic excellence and acceptance to a top university. For Louis, his grades mean everything. But self-doubt and exhaustion plague him as he often studies into the early hours of the morning.
Annwfn is the mystical name of the Celtic Otherworld. It is also the name of Louisâs friend, Anne Engliesin. Anne is brilliant; top of their year, she makes getting perfect grades look easy. And like Louis, who is Scottish-Asian, she too is different, keeping secret that her father was among a group of survivors who escaped the Otherworld and who now make their lives in modern Edinburgh. Her mumâs a native Scot, but her father is a descendant of a mythical people.
An Otherworld demon now seeks to destroy the remaining survivors, and this includes Anne. Icelos, or âIceâ is the personification of nightmares. Only Louis, with his intellect and true heart, has what it takes to protect his friends. But what Louis doesnât realise is that, in saving the lives of his friends, his stature against the evil of the world grows until his life becomes the greatest prize of all.
In the early hours of the morning, Louis was sleeping restlessly. The sheets were tied in knots around his feet, the covers thrown to the side and spilling over to the floor. At 4am his eyes opened, and he turned to the LED clock on the nightstand. Putting feet into slippers and pulling on his robe to warm against the chill, Louis sat down at the desk. Quietly, he pulled the chain to a desktop lamp â turning on the main light in his bedroom might alert his parents to the fact he was up.
Louis hated his life, and said so out loud.
He reviewed his calculus and biology homework lessons from the previous night and found mistakes. He couldnât believe he was so stupid. Finally, he resumed where he had left off on the Celtic lore assignment which had sent him to sleep the night before. The class annoyed him; it was a silly elective and it should have been an easy grade. Louis sorted through his copious notes and found the inspiration necessary to begin an essay. It flowed over onto a second, third, and fourth page; Louis only paused to silence his alarm clock. He was surprised to find he had been writing non-stop for almost an hour.
By 6am Louis was stiff from sitting still at the desk for so long. He went to his bathroom and opened the window a crack to keep the room from steaming up. He ran water for the shower and disrobed while he waited for it to warm. His face, framed by unkempt hair, stared impassively into the mirror. His complexion was pale, like his Scottish mother, but his features were unmistakably Asian, like his dad. His dark, angular eyes and high cheekbones gave him a stern expression. His mouth seemed to naturally pout in permanent distaste.
âFuck you, Louis Song.â
Once steam began to creep across the mirror, he was in and out of the shower in minutes, and Louis spent more time fastidiously drying the bathroom than himself. He did this because of the fits his mum threw about cleaning up after himself. It was enough to have made him borderline neurotic.
Louis reached the bottom of the stairs just as his dad was leaving.
âHave a great day, son,â said Eamon Song.
âYou too, Dad.â Louis smiled before he could help himself.
He had just started on a bowl of cereal when his mum came into the kitchen.
âHi, honey.â Nora Song patted Louisâ head and tossed her car keys onto the countertop.
Louis didnât respond, except to subtly cringe. He remained stone-faced as she took out bread and cold meat to fix his sandwich, impatiently telling her, âToo much,â when she overstuffed it. She didnât take much out before she sealed the sandwich in a bag. Louis ceased further communication.
âBig day today?â
Louis shrugged. He put his dishes into the sink, and they filed out to the garage.
At a high level, The Son of Poetry is a conflict between the evil Sluagh and the Aos Si (which is the Irish form for such fae-like beings; I donât know why Gill did not use the Scottish Gaelic daoine sĂŹth). Caught up in the middle of dark events, teenager Louis Song doggedly works to save the girl he loves.
The right amount of detail anchors a reader, allowing them to live the story with the characters. Unfortunately, the minutiae in this tale slows the pace to a crawl, and much of the ponderous 200,000 word count could have been cut to aid flow. Though the writing holds potential, it is riddled with inconsistencies, often restating the obvious while not providing enough context to prevent non sequiturs. Gill executes many of the slower scenes with well phrased, if unnecessary, description. But when the intensity picks up, the words frequently get in their own way. And while the charactersâboth good and evilâare quite vivid, I often felt the author was telling me how to interpret them, instead of showing me convincingly.
The sluaghâs mindless cruelty takes center stage, and a stark look at the lowlifes in the underbelly of Edinburgh and repeated f-bombs push the book further towards the graphic end of the spectrum. We seem to spend a lot of time focusing on evil, because we can; meanwhile, many of the more heroic moments feel awkward and sentimental: âIf eyes were windows to the soul, then Louis wanted to see into Anneâs, and she stared back into his.â Yet there are page-turning passages, and the scene in which Nym has to coach Louis up a sheer cliff face had me feeling like I was learning to climb right there with him.
The book left me with unresolved questions, and several promising themes fell flat. Singing, for instance, clearly has some connection with magic, but while choral music is often described in detail, this was never tied into the broader story. Certain evil creatures conveniently (and literally) disappear without explanation. The main conflict remains fuzzy, as I never fully grasped the identity of the antagonist, nor his intent in targeting Anne. And though most character arcs resolve, the compelling Chief Inspector Larimore seems left out in the cold.
Nevertheless, readers with an interest in Scotland or Celtic mythology may enjoy this tale of an unlikely hero managing to save the day.