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…