What am I reading? – January 2025

The first thing you need to know is that I do not binge-consume. People always find it bizarre when I get into conversations and they ask what I think about a new series that has just released on Netflix or some other streaming service, and I say ‘Well, I enjoyed the first episode’. But I just find a lot of additional enjoyment from stretching out the experience and consuming entertainment at a more sedate pace. And I am exactly the same with novels as I am with television.

What this boils down to is an admission that I read several series concurrently, rather than binging my way through one at a time. In fact, I almost always strongly dislike going straight from one book in a series to the next one. I’d much rather let it sink in slowly, while I ruminate and reflect. Then, after a week or two or more, I can go back and read the next volume. In fact, with the Dresden Files, I’ve deliberately eked it out over more than two years, knowing full well that Butcher has been releasing them much more sporadically in recent years and so I’m trying to avoid finishing the existing series.

However, I made an exception with one of my current series and that’s the one I wanted to tell you about in this post. I’m reading Mark Hayden’s King’s Watch series and thoroughly enjoying them. After the first one, I did my usual thing of moving on to a different stand-alone or one of the other series I’m reading. But I found I went straight from volume 2 to 3, and that is a big compliment to Mr Hayden.

Right now, I’m on the fourth book in the sequence, Tenfold. The books follow the adventures of Conrad Clarke, a former (and, Conrad would argue, still) RAF officer who happens to acquire a slight gift for magick (yes, with a k) at the start of the first book. Conrad’s magick qualifies him for a position with the King’s Watch, an organisation of professional mages who act as a kind of police force for magick in much of the UK.

What I didn’t know when I bought the first book, The 13th Witch, was that this is Hayden’s second series detailing the exploits of Conrad Clarke. In the earlier series, Conrad has no connection with the supernatural world. It turns out not to be a problem if you haven’t read the other books before starting out on the King’s Watch. In fact, I recall being impressed by the rich and textured background Conrad seemed to have from the first page. In retrospect, I now realised why Hayden knew his character so well at that point and why there is so much history and depth in Conrad’s narration. The experience reminds me of reading The Lord of the Rings without having read The Silmarillion (and, let’s face it: who ever reads The Silmarillion first?). There is a level of veracity to Conrad’s character that comes from his being well-established before the series even began.

One of the things I enjoyed most about the second and third book in the series was the friendship between Conrad and his work partner Vicky. Although she is a far superior mage to Conrad, Vicky is much younger and less familiar with the seedier side of the mundane world. Their prior skills and knowledge make them a good pairing, and there is a lot of fun to be had from their banter as they learn to fit into each other’s lives. Vicky is still present in Tenfold but sadly takes much more of a backseat while Hayden explores some of the other important relationships in Conrad’s work and personal lives. In a long series like this (there are more than ten main books, as well as some novellas or stories), it’s necessary to put in this kind of foundational work, and Hayden shows he is well aware of all the tricks he needs to do in order to make a long series pay off.

I have absolutely torn through Tenfold despite being in the midst of a busy week in my own life. This is testimony to Hayden’s writers chops. I tip my hat (I’m not entirely sure I have a hat, but I tip my imaginary one).

The books each have their own self-contained story, so far at least, but there are plenty of hints of a bigger, overarching plot. By the time you're on Book 4, the background story is starting to take shape.

What I tend to do with long series is to buy the first one as a trial. If I enjoy it I usually buy Book 2. If Book 2 doesn’t let me down, I normally go ahead and buy the lot so that I don’t forget to get them. So I already have all of the King’s Watch main series. My big question now is whether I’ll go on and read the other Conrad Clarke books, which seem to belong to a genre I read much less frequently. Given how much I am enjoying Hayden’s prose and, in particular, the characters of Conrad’s world, the likelihood is that the answer will be yes.