Wickhills

by Premee Mohamed

In the dangerous magical city of Wickhills, a streetwise secret agent is tasked with protecting a foreign defector from his pursuers... even at the threat of war.

Looking after a defecting scientist should have been Ferec's easiest mission. But now he's on the run from the intelligence agency she works for, dodging a handler who might have gone rogue, and relying on a secret patchwork of illicit resources and dodgy contacts. Turns out his defector might be carrying an apocalypse-level magical weapon ― and protecting it requires Ferec and his team to go underground, literally. Down here, the rules are very different... and the tense peace between every city in the world will shatter unless Ferec can drag their darkest secrets into the light.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Adult, Mystery, Thriller, Mystery Thriller, Science Fiction

320 pages, Hardcover

First published September 8, 2026

About the author

Premee Mohamed is a Nebula award-winning Indo-Caribbean scientist and speculative fiction author based in Edmonton, Alberta. She is an Assistant Editor at the short fiction audio venue Escape Pod and the author of the 'Beneath the Rising' series of novels as well as several novellas. Her short fiction has appeared in many venues and she can be found on Twitter at @premeesaurus and on her website at www.premeemohamed.com.

Reviews

[Maria reads SFF]

"Wickhills" by Premee Mohamed is the most creative High Fantasy setting. There is also a spy mission, but the reason I am so impressed by this novel, is its largest personality, the city of Wickhills.
In the six years since the Fantasy genre has almost completely taken over my reading, I have encountered some incredibly fascinating cities, but not even if I combine every single one of them together can they compare to Wickhills. There is such an abundance of magical creatures, people, mind-bending architecture, hidden districts, secret organizations.
The other protagonist is Ferec, a member of a spy agency that has learned the ways of the city since his childhood and is using this knowledge for his missions. He is a morally gray, bright, but also flawed man. He is the sort of character that I can understand, even respect, but I only got to love him at the end of the novel. The secondary characters were so fascinating and I wanted even more from them.
The mission, the largest part of the plot is twisty, messy, unpredictable, complex, even confusing at times, but I much prefer it as it feels so much more convincing.
For the High Fantasy readers that are willing to pay attention, this standalone novel is a perfect break from predictable plots or recycled trends. It does get pretty close the New Weird subgenre, another offering for readers with overflowing imagination like myself.
This novel did so much for me in a challenging period of my life, so I am looking forward to read again in a time where I can fully lavish in its beauty.

[Danielle Pulliam]

DNFed at 10% was not interested in the characters. There was plenty of exposition, but very little about the characters.

[toloveabook]

(5 stars) I received an eARC From the publisher. This is my honest review.

I adored this book. It’s one of those unique, magical books that isn’t for everyone...but if it is for you? Boy are you in for a treat.

This is a fantasy spy novel. But what’s so special about this book is Wickhills, the city itself. I love when a setting is a character in its own right. Wickhills goes a step further: it’s the main character.

I love old cities. When I travel, I spend most of my time walking down little side streets and discovering hidden parks and alcoves. That’s what reading Wickhills felt like. Every time I thought I finally understood the city, the author showed me something new. There is so much to discover! I read many paragraphs twice just to be sure I could take in all the information.

The world building (and by that, I mean the city) is dense and complex. Page upon page is devoted to peeling back the layers of this impossible setting. If you like the majesty of Camorr in The Lies of Locke Lamora, the seedy underworld of Ketterdam in Six of Crows, the dangerous deep of Bringer of Dust’s fantasy Paris, or the surreal, non-euclidean geometry of Bulikov in City of Stairs, you will love this book.

I love spy novels. I know I post mostly about speculative fiction, but I grew up on Le Carre. Wickhills holds its own. You can see the shape of it early on. The author foreshadows everything well, and you are unlikely to feel whiplash from the twists and turns. Instead, Wickhills employs my favorite spy novel device: it questions the system, not the characters.

Speaking of characters...in a city bursting at the seams with humans and non-human magical beings, I don’t think we meet a single decent person - and I wouldn’t expect anything less from a city of spies, secret police, and potentially world-ending power. I loved them all.

If you want a plot that leaps off the first page and never slows down, you will be disappointed. We first have to be introduced to Wickhills, and Wickhills is not easy to understand. But if you’re looking for a unique fantasy city with more personality than your average MC, this is for you.

[Miranda]

When I write these reviews, I’m generally trying to answer two questions for a reader--first, what is this book about, and two, what is the experience of reading this book like. Wickhills poses a problem for me on both axes. What is Wickhills about? It’s about a city, it’s about a flawed man on a difficult mission. It’s about a dangerous weapon and secret agents. It’s about an archivist and a refugee. It’s about what happens to them when they can trust no one. But if you read Wickhills for a plot, you’re going to be very disappointed. It’s a meandering plot that feels more like a rambling story told by an old man at a dingy old pub than like a crisp novel.

And what is the experience of reading Wickhills like? It’s a slow book. It’s a book that rewards attention and careful reading. Give it space and time. There are characters but it’s more a book of ideas. The sentences and ideas are good--my major complaint was that the main character was (in my opinion) the least interesting character on the pages. I should have known better than to expect a typical reading experience from Premee Mohamed, but this is one of her more experimental efforts, and it was right on the edge of what I like. (And I’m pretty tolerant of weird experimental fiction.)

Recommended for fans of Charles Dickens, The Spear Cuts Through Water, and Alexander Chee.

I received an ARC in exchange for this honest review.

[Kyle Foley]

4.25/5 stars

A super fun urban fantasy thriller. I had 0 expectations going in and was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed this.

[Kate Hyde]

The trouble with mixing genres is that sometimes the result is neither one thing nor t'other, and such is the case here.
As would be expected from an author of Mohamed's calibre, the prose is excellent, descriptions evocative, setting very atmospheric, and pace well worked out. However, there wasn't enough exposition on how the city worked, with so many different species and such magical effects as whole neighbourhoods being closed off. And then, there was too much explanation, at unsuitable times, by characters who wouldn't realistically have done so. This last, in particular, I found grating, as it was obviously shoe-horned in for the benefit of the reader, but it was done rather awkwardly, and at the expense of credibility of certain characters. It was difficult then to stay invested in the outcome - although I will admit that the very end was quite tantalising - though perhaps not quite enough to have me longing for a sequel. Excellent author, but not her best work.
My thanks to Edelweiss for the ARC, all opinions are my own.

[Craig]

I'm bummed to say I'm pretty torn about this one. I was immediately drawn in by the evocative, dripped-wax-inspired(?) cover, and I do love me a good familiar-genre-in-a-fantastical-city narrative... but in this case, my enjoyment of the genre was heavily dampened by the setting.

I'll start with the good. I greatly enjoyed the twisty spycraft that the main character, Fenec, is drawn into—mysterious foes, uncertain allies, untrustworthy scientists who are possibly spies, and all the trimmings. I also appreciated that Fenec is not your run-of-the-mill member of a city Secret Police force; his secrets have secrets, and he has hidden depths, self-aggregated resources, and an in-depth knowledge and love of his city that even his colleagues would only scratch the surface of. That said, and probably because the story is a spiral of ever-deepening conspiracies and who-can-we-really-trust, we don't really get any such insight into any other characters; this is definitely a one-man show.

Where this book unfortunately fell flat to me seems to be an area I've seen other reviewers praise—the worldbuilding. The city of Wickhills is a magical place, with all kinds of strange creatures, strange neighborhoods, strange architecture, and so on and so forth. Sadly, I personally never got a good feel of how the city actually works... there are markets and bars and docks, your standard fantasy-city locations, but no sense of how it all interacts, how the people generally spend their day-to-day lives, etc. Every new, quirky locale felt like a setpiece to me, not a part of an actual living, breathing community. This isn't even going into the (as far as I could tell) arbitrary nonhuman races that also apparently call Wickhills home; there are certainly your standard ogres and manticores and vampyres, and others that I was completely unfamiliar with (not sure if they were invented for the book or if it's just my personal lack of knowledge), but I only rarely got a sense of them belonging to any sort of community, instead of being one-off "hey, look at that unusual fella!" passers-by. Worldbuilding by adding novelties, not integrating them.

I'm afraid the resolution of the mystery plot also fell flat for me. I suppose we kind of get some answers, but they are kind of vague and handwavey; I feel like they'll have greater repercussions for the world in the future, as well as leading into a longer book series. But they didn't seem to have much impact on the resolution of this story, and that's not very satisfactory. I also have some questions about how/why some of this stuff is actually secret, or unknown, based on certain revelations, but that's venturing into spoiler territory.

To sum up: I feel like I'm being pretty negative in this write-up, but I actually liked the story! It had suspense, it had twists & turns, it had intrigue, it had a lot of creativity, and I enjoyed it. Sadly, my personal nitpicks with the world it occurs in ended up distracting me way too much... but I'm glad I appear to be in the minority in that respect so far.

My thanks to Tor Publishing Group and NetGalley for providing an early digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

[Jamedi]

Review originally on JamReads

Let me start the review by saying that categorizing Premee Mohamed's work into one genre is a difficult task, and that's no different with Wickhills; so bear with me as I try to capture in words what I consider one of the most imaginative settings I've read in the recent years (weird cities might be one of my favourite tropes) used as the perfect scenario for a story that could be defined as a Cold War analogue espionage fantasy that progressively gets weirder, in the same way as we discover more behind the layers of Wickhills.

A story with a simple beginning, a bit in the way of classic spy stories, with a streetwise secret agent, Ferenc, tasked with protecting a foreign defector; however, what should have been a simple mission soon gets much more complicated, Ferec and his team on the run from the agency, relying on illicit resources and contacts. With the defector carrying an apocalypse-level weapon that could break the fragile equilibrium between the cities, our characters will have to go underground to find how to solve it, a journey that will expose the cracks in the system above.

Ferec acts as the main character of the story, an undercover spy for an agency that is proficient in the particular ways of the city; his past helping his acts, knowledge that he can use for the missions. It's far from being a perfect person, being more what we could call a morally grey character, bright but with questionable choices. He can be a bit coldhearted when taking decisions, but it's understandable when put into context. The rest of the cast is also interesting, each one in their own ways (and some, like certain King, leave a long-lasting impression).

The own city feels a bit like its own character, and our impression of it will change as the plot advances, as Mohamed slowly unravels the weirdness behind the apparent low fantasy setting; you pass from "okay, simple espionage story" to "just let the author cook" pretty fast. The reader's attention is rewarded with an imaginative and weird setting, perfect to accompany that twisty and convoluted plot, which, in a certain sense, takes the tropes of espionage stories to create something different, inviting to question the system and its interests through the eyes of Ferec and the rest.
It is brilliantly paced, a bit fast with plenty of action scenes, but balancing all of them with some moments to catch the breath, allowing us to process all that happened and how this affects the story.

Wickhills is an excellent novel, another proof of Premee Mohamed's brilliance; I can't recommend it enough, especially for those fans of things that are not afraid to go far from the conventional, almost weird fiction. Do yourself a favour and pick a copy!

[Dan Trefethen]

4.5 stars. The reveal at the end of What Is Really Going On was a little too loopy for me, despite the fact that this is a book where lots of loopy stuff happens. In a good way.

It's an urban fantasy where "the city is a character" in that much-maligned phrase, but here it almost makes sense (oh, that ending). Our protagonist, Ferec, is working for a type of secret police that is supposed to keep a lid on the city and prevent total spin-out-of-control chaos in a fragile civilization. There are a total of six walled cities on this world, and Wickhills is the one Ferec grew up in and knows like the back of his hand.

The plot moves fast: a simple retrieval job goes haywire when his group is ambushed on the way back to HQ, and the person they retrieve seems to be wanted by just about everybody, including the city he defected from. He also has a Macguffin, a small device whose purpose is unknown for most of the book but is the linchpin for the pursuit.

So much for plot. There are lots of fast-moving urban fantasies out there. What I liked about this book was the author's use of language to describe the city and its denizens (many of which are non-human and very strange, including the animals and insects). There's also a juxtaposition of humor and horror, which if done right is a delight to read.

As fast as the plot moves, it's the description of the different parts of the city that I enjoyed most. There was a strong "Perdido Street Station" vibe with this book, and though the writing wasn't quite up to that level, it was satisfyingly close.

Although you tend to root for Ferec, in the latter part of the book the point of a secret police becomes clear, and Ferec (and we) question his role in it and how good intentions become warped by power. It's a subtle change in tone that makes you wonder who are the good guys in this book, and if there are any.

Although I haven't read much of Premee Mohamed's work, I've read (and been impressed by) some. This is the best thing of hers I've read and may indeed be her best work yet. That's promising, and I'll continue to follow her work.

[Aiyesha]

** THE VERSION OF THIS BOOK THAT I READ WAS AN ARC **

[Lisa Eckstein]

Ferec has many years of experience as a Seaborne agent, and he knows the city of Wickhills better than anyone, but his latest mission makes him question everything he thought he knew about both the agency and the city. Wickhills, like the world's other cities, is surrounded by walls. Land travel between cities is impossible, and sea travel carefully controlled. Ferec's handler assigns him to retrieve an asset from an incoming ship, but nobody is to know about this assignment, not even the rest of the agency. The asset turns out to be a stowaway scientist who has come in secret from another city, bringing knowledge and a device that he won't explain, but that he says would be dangerous in the wrong hands. The more Ferec learns, the more complicated the situation becomes.

This is an exciting spy story with a Cold War vibe, set in an unusual fantasy city. In Wickhills, among other oddnesses, pillars and glass churches sprout from the ground and must be handled by the Defective Architecture Eradication Division. Though some of the setting details seem like random whimsy, there's an overall sense of logic and deep history to the worldbuilding. I enjoyed exploring Wickhills with Ferec as my guide, and I was caught up in the twists and turns of the espionage thriller.

This is my first time reading a book by Mohamed, but she has published more than a dozen others in a range of speculative genres. While Wickhills is a standalone, I wouldn't be surprised to see more set in this world, and I'd definitely read on.

[Leanna Streeter]

I went into this expecting an urban fantasy, and that’s exactly what I got… with a healthy dose of spy thriller mixed in. As someone who has a weakness for spy thrillers, this combination was right up my alley.

The worldbuilding was easily my favorite part. Wickhills feels like a place with secrets tucked into every corner, and I loved discovering more about the city as the story unfolded. The atmosphere is strange, immersive, and unlike anything else I’ve read recently.

The espionage elements kept the plot moving while the fantasy gave the world its own unique identity. It made for a fun, fast-paced read that constantly had me wondering who could be trusted.

If you’re looking for an urban fantasy that does something a little different, blending magic with espionage and conspiracy, I’d definitely recommend giving this one a try.

[☕️Kimberly (Caffeinated Reviewer)]

Excellent.

When I opened the pages of Wickhills, I expected an urban fantasy with a suspenseful plot, and while I got that; the author delivered so much more. Wickhills is a city (country) surrounded by a wall and is one of just a few cities remaining in the world, each isolated from the other. Within the walls live not only humans but others. There are avian types, sea types, vampires, a manticore, and more. All live out in the open. I imagined the city streets similar to old London or Diagon Alley.

We meet Ferec, a member of Seaborne, Wickhills’ Secret Police. He’s been a member for ten years, but as we soon learn, he has his own resources, hidey-holes, contacts, and allies. Seaborne doesn’t advertise, and he likes to think they are like our CIA. His boss, a manticore, gives Ferec and his partner an assignment on the sea docks to retrieve a foreign defector. Things go sideways, and Ferec soon finds himself not only questioning his boss but partnered with a motley crew he isn’t even sure he can trust.

I read Wickhills slowly over the course of a week as I immersed myself in this magical world and got to know the key players and villains. The story slowly unfolded and about midway I found myself completely caught up and secretly hoping this won’t be standalone.

I admired Ferec and felt like I understood him. I loved the underworld and the sidekicks who assisted him from there. We’ve got twists, betrayals, power grabs, and secrets combined with a deadly invention that not only questions the existence of the entire world but could end it as well.

A brilliant gaslamp fantasy filled with magic, rich characters, science fiction, and plenty of suspense and intrigue. I highly recommend this to fans of Robert Jackson Bennett and Benedict Jacka.

While the story wrapped up and left me satisfied, Mohamed left the door open for more and I sincerely hope he revisits this world.

This review originally published at Caffeinated Reviewer

[Ryan Bartz]

I’m soft DNFing this one at about 60 pages in. I don’t know if the prose are for me. While it seems like a lot of people enjoy the world building, I feel like I’m having to decipher the writing and getting caught on what feel like tangents in the storytelling. I so badly want to like this but im just losing interest.

[laureneliza]

This was an interesting and intriguing book, with vivid depictions and intricate world building, but I got zero emotion from it, and it was quite dense and slow so the emotion would have really helped propel me through it in addition to just wanting to know how it resolved.

[TheBookandBubble]

This was such a fun spy thriller mixed with fantasy!

Ferec is sent on what should be a pretty simple mission along the riverfront to retrieve a “package.” Except the package turns out to be a scientist with a device that could threaten the safety of the entire world. And suddenly, Ferec is on the run from the very intelligence agency they work for!

I really enjoyed the world-building in this one. There are six major cities left after a catastrophic event. Ferec is constantly being chased, we get to see so much of this strange and fascinating world.

And the city itself?! So cool and weird. Buildings that grow, something lurking in the water, and all kinds of unique details that made the setting feel alive. This book was a fun adventure/read.

[Amelia Dupont]

Mohamed built out a wholly original, detailed world for this darkly fantastical story. Whickhills is dark, wet, alive, and full of little surprises in every corner. The settings in this story were probably my favorite part. I truly enjoyed imagining every little detail of the environments described. Another positive for me is the misfit crew of quirky characters that features a variety of fantasy species/races.

One thing that threw me at first was the tendency to skip scenes and then play catch-up at the start of the next chapter. We'd be filled in on a scene that took place "off-screen". But as the story progressed, I grew to appreciate this choice, as the story was already very detailed and didn't need to be bogged down with every single action scene or transition scene.

Would recommend to fantasy readers as we transition into fall!

Thank you to NetGalley and TOR for the ARC.

[Marlene]

I picked this up because I’ve read a lot of the author’s work in the past few years and really enjoyed it. Howsomever, based on my reading of her Annual Migration of Clouds novella series and The Butcher of the Forest and some of her other short works, I was expecting, well, a short work. Which Wickhills definitely is not.

What I got was better, thicker, richer, denser and with a whole lot more to chew on both while reading and after I finished. If it WAS finished, which is more than a bit of an open question – but in an excellent way.

Okay, I KNOW I need to explain that.

The world of Wickhills, ESPECIALLY the city of Wickhills in that world, is very much urban fantasy AND gaslamp fantasy. Wickhills is a city, but it’s also a country. Not exactly but really, truly. The world is a bit like that of The Starless Crown or, weirdly and possibly more likely, the world of the Forever Desert. There are relatively few cities – or other safe places to live – and they are all almost completely isolated from one another. People believe that isolation happened more or less naturally as it did in The Starless Crown, but at the end there are hints that it might have been like the Forever Desert in that people believe the spaces between are impassible but they’re actually just very difficult AND policed by forces who are determined to keep people separated.

But it’s also a world like Elantra, in that not all the ‘people’ are human people. They’re all ‘people’ but some are manticores (Ferec’s boss is a manticore) there are avian-type people, gargoyle-type people, aquatic monster-type people and vampires. The vampires start seeming fairly ordinary compared to some of the other folks who make up Wickhills.

In other words, there’s a LOT going on just figuring out what’s going on. And then there’s the story.

Ferec is a member of Wickhills’ Secret Police. Of course they don’t call themselves that or they’d never be able to recruit anyone. And Ferec has spent nearly ten years convincing himself that Seaborne ISN’T the secret police. That they’re the equivalent of the CIA, or the FBI, or some combination thereof. (But if they’re the FBI they’re the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover at his MOST paranoid.)

So underneath the story about spies and secret agents and weapons of mutually assured destruction, there’s a story about Ferec coming to terms, or NOT, with who he’s REALLY been working for and the kind of work he’s ACTUALLY been doing – for a DECADE.

But there IS a story about spies and secret agents and weapons of mass and mutually assured destruction – and that’s the story that keeps the reader on the edge of their seat throughout Ferec’s wildly dangerous out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the fire mad running dash from the highest heights of the city he knows and loves all the way down to the darkest and deepest depths where he owes a debt that he never has been able to pay.

All he can do is add to his tab and hope that, once again, he can manage to come out on top. IF he can figure out what the hell that top might actually be – and if he can keep his gang of colleagues turned friends AND traitors alive along the way.

Escape Rating A: There seems to be a trend this year of stories – or at least fantasy and science fiction stories – where the system is corrupt (although that’s far from new in either genre) – where the protagonist is more of an antihero than a hero (that’s not new either) – but where the protagonist’s ability to get the job, usually a job that’s more than slightly dirty, done relies a LOT on friends in some VERY low places in order to survive and to somehow save whatever of the day is worth saving. Which generally doesn’t turn out to be nearly as much as the protagonist believed it was at the beginning.

Green City Wars was EXACTLY that type of story, and Skotch and Ferec are in really similar situations and would have a surprising amount of stuff in common and stories to swap – even though Skotch is a genetically engineered raccoon – like Rocket in Guardians of the Galaxy – and his story is science fiction, while Ferec is human and his story is gaslamp fantasy.

This is very much a story about how the sausage gets made – AND it’s a story of the sausage maker discovering that he’s been making bloody sausage all along and not something he can label “tube steak”. Ferec has always known that the job could be dirty, but here he’s confronted with the fact that it’s been dirty all along and that it’s dirty all the way down to the bone. It strips away at his self-worth while at the same time his ability to keep getting it done – and getting his team out of the various traps – shows him just how good he is at it, even though the job itself is not good at all.

I came for the author, but I got into the story for Ferec – as we’re intended to. He’s a character of hidden depths and secret histories, as is the city that he loves. And won’t be able to keep even if he’s able to keep both it – and himself – alive. Unless the job isn’t done yet. Or it isn’t done with him yet. Which would be fitting and fascinating and this reader would be absolutely there for it.

Originally published at Reading Reality

[Siavahda]

Might round up to 5 stars, I'm still thinking it over. But: magnificent! I hope we get so many more stories in this setting, I adore it!

Rtc!

Highlights

~ware the walls
~are good guys even a thing
~a manticore in a suit
~heists! hostages! kidnapping!
~bratty inventors
~an eyebrow-raising tablecloth
~I WOULD LIKE A STREETLIGHT FOR A PET, PLEASE.

I read this in two days, and resented every moment that tore me away from it!

I haven’t exactly clicked with Mohamed’s works before. I’ve always been able to tell they’re objectively good – And What Can We Offer You Tonight, Beneath the Rising, etc – but I never actually had fun with them.

Well, I can happily announce that if you don’t enjoy Mohamed’s books, this is the one that will convince you otherwise!

An enormous part of that is the setting. Wickhills, the city, utterly enchanted me. It’s baroque and – honestly, quite eldritch. This is a place where new trainlines spring up overnight without human intervention, where glass spires might start growing out of your garden without warning, where you must not look into the puddles because if you make eye-contact with the things in the water, you’re done for. A good chunk of the population isn’t human; one of the important characters in the book is a manticore. !!! (He wears suits. It’s amazing.)

The Market Street Wyrn slackened its sable coils around the dome of the old mall, somnolescent but not quite asleep, its great pre-hibernation yawns occasionally flooding the neighbourhood with amber light. At street level lay the dragon’s shine, begging it to rest, to dream, the wooden box crowded with cheap tin amulets and wizened crabapples.

It’s not just the physical city itself: there are so many little details of cultural worldbuilding that make this setting feel incredibly real, incredibly quickly: clothing, pastry fillings, superstitions about finding pennies – even myths about boat colours!

A sizeable, old-fashioned galleon, triple-masted, red sails, black timbers. The black was conspicuous but not unheard of; there was a persistent belief that sea monsters and suchlike responded to colour, and black would prevent attacks on ships at night or during heavy weather. But it was rare, for most owners accounted a black-painted ship bad luck for other, vaguer reasons, and refused to paint their ships.

HOW FREAKING COOL IS THAT??? And Wickhills is full of things like this, so that by the end of the first chapter, you BELIEVE in this setting in a way most authors don’t manage after entire trilogies. And that belief, that sense of reality, is necessary, I think, because as I’ve said Wickhills is so freaking weird that it would be easy not to believe. Often it’s hard to get immersed in a really weird setting! But MY GODS, not this time!

And I love, so much, the way Mohamed writes about Wickhills – we learn about the city’s strangeness not all at once, but in pieces, and when we do the narrative claims there is nothing at all odd about it. It’s head-spinning: the blithe insouciance of Feyric and the other characters as they take for granted things readers will gape at! Which manifests as completely opposing ideas of what is important; details that to us are a very big deal are constantly given to us late, in passing, casually. One character has four arms, and we do not learn that for several chapters after meeting him – because in Wickhills this is nothing unusual, so why would Feyric comment on it in his internal narration? I don’t know what the technical term is, for narration that reflects the values/perspectives of the characters, writing that is shaped by the fictional worldbuilding – but it is one of my favourite things and Mohamed ROCKS at it!

The dissonance of this approach – the blitheness, combined with the utterly weird – it was a constant joy to me. And it feels very tongue-in-cheek, as if Mohamed is winking at us, inviting us to come play in this strange but wonderful world she’s made.

(Yet another tongue-in-cheek thing is the fact that Mohamed presents us with a major character who is, himself, new to Wickhills: thereby almost giving the reader a voice within the story. We understand EXACTLY what this character is going through, his surprise, his shock, his wails that this is NOT FREAKING NORMAL! It’s like Mohamed is giving us an outlet for our feelings within the story, which just strengthens the immersion, honestly, and is so meta and funny! Every time this characters threatens to freak out at yet another WickhillsTM thing, I could not have been more sympathetic, right there with him in wanting to flail about it!)(Though I would like to emphasise that my flailing was DELIGHT and his is HORROR so, you know. Different ends of the spectrum!)

Which is in itself another dissonance, because the story is not especially playful. It’s quite grim – this is a spy novel, with the highest possible stakes, various factions prepared to do horrific things to get their hands on a mysterious super-weapon. It threatens to kick off a genuine World War, though Feyric, our protagonist, initially has no idea why – no one but the weapon’s inventor knows what it does, and he refuses to explain until they get it back. (I am still surprised no one took him somewhere private for a kicking to make him stop acting like a spoiled brat.) So the tension is intense, moreso because Bardanes, Feyric’s handler, is acting very strange, reminiscing about Wickhills’ civil war for no obvious reason; and because, in the process of trying to get the weapon back, Feyric has to take himself and his team into parts of the city no one is supposed to know about. It gradually becomes clear that whatever has been invented is tied to fundamental truths about what Wickhills even is, because ‘a city’ is apparently not even close to the whole truth.

It would be hugely misleading, though, if I left you with the impression that this is a very Grim And Serious book. It is, and it isn’t. Like that authorial wink, Wickhills is wound through with veins of humour, moments of surprising and wonderful whimsy. Some of this is the worldbuilding (THE STREETLIGHTS, I LOVE THEM), and some of it is the characters (the tablecloth!). One of the moments that stands out for me, even after finishing the whole novel, is a glittery giggle-moment in the very first pages, when Feyric is so bored at his post he investigates whether a beetle that keeps going past might be an enemy agent spying on him.

Read the rest at Every Book a Doorway!

[Alexandra]

The short version is that if you enjoy a thoroughly realised fantastical city, and you like spies and mystery, you should probably just stop reading this review and go get this.

And if you've heard of Mohamed as a predominantly horror writer, don't worry; while there are certainly unpleasant things happening in this novel, I don't think I'd classify it as horror. (I say this as a mostly non-horror reader.)

If you're still here... this review contains some minor thematic spoilers, but nothing major.

There's something about a novel that loves a city that tends to delight me. Sometimes it's a real city -- China Mieville's Kraken loves London; sometimes fantastical... to make a similar point, Mieville's The City and the City. Tolkien's Minas Tirith has elements of this; Grace Chan's Melbourne in Every Version of You; Makana Yamamoto's space station in Hammajang Luck has some of the same vibe. And when that city has weirdness as well... you've got me. And I say that as someone who is distinctly not good at directions; if the clue to who the murderer is relies on knowing what's west and what's east, from a comment ten pages ago, I am not going to pick up on it.

Wickhills the city is a significant character in its own right in this novel. We're thrown into it, and its fantastical nature, very quickly: the Market Street Wyrm is on the first page; we have windmills and museums, banks, a busy port, child labour. Across the novel we learn about omnibuses, a variety of options for artificial light, and the fact that humans are only one of the sentient species inhabiting the city. Wickhills is unstable - its geography can change in an instant; Wickhills is a version of democratic; and Wickhills is impossible to know completely.

The main narrative character is Ferec, which is fitting as he has made it his goal in life to try and understand Wickhills as best he can. Unconnected - except insofar as his obsession is useful on-the-job knowledge - for nearly ten year he has worked for Seaborne, a highly secretive counter-terrorism organisation. His jobs have ranged from assassination to seduction to infiltrating and undermining seditious groups. As the novel opens, he and his partner are waiting for a ship to arrive, so that they can locate and procure a particularly valuable asset.

And it all goes downhill from there.

This sort of novel will often feature a 'getting the band together' section - which I usually enjoy; I love some repartee and squabbling to figure out team roles. Mohamed, however, largely eschews that. Ferec doesn't get to pick most of his team; they spend very little time on bonding or coming to know one another. Instead, the entire focus is the mission. Because that asset Ferec lifted off the boat turns out to be wanted by some very serious people (of course) and is far more dangerous than anyone had understood (of course).

Much of the novel is the action of Ferec securing the asset (and losing it and retrieving it etc). But there's a philosophical aspect to the novel as well, which for me puts the novel in quite a different light. Ferec himself is not an innately moral man, but he does believe in the importance of Seaborne and its place in the city. Over the course of the novel, however, the place and use of Seaborne -- effectively a secret police -- is brought into question by various characters. Ferec is made to look at how his world works, and where it fits with what he understands of the city. And these questions -- of how societies function, the role of secretive power structures, where and how power is exercised -- they're always important to ask; they feel vital at the moment.

Mohamed writes beautifully; her descriptions are evocative, her conversations often tantalisingly full of ellipses but conveying just enough information. The novel provides some answers, but nowhere near all of them -- I could imagine at least half a dozen more novels just picking up on some of the points mentioned here. I haven't even mentioned that Ferec's boss is a manticore.

Some people are going to find the lack of clarity around some points very frustrating. But no one ever knows their city completely, so what makes you think you would know Wickhills -- a much weirder city than the one you live in -- any better?

Highly recommended.

[Cindy]

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I requested this on NetGalley because Premee Mohamed was the author. Her novella Butcher of the Forest blew me away, so I leapt at the chance to read something else written by her. Unfortunately, Wickhills didn't have the same effect on me Butcher of the Forest did, but I think I just wasn't the right audience.

To be fair, it's simply a different genre than Butcher of the Forest. While still fantasy, Wickhills is a cloak-and-dagger spy novel, with a "Who watches the Watchmen?" motif running through it. That's not really my usual genre, so someone more into secret agent type stories would likely enjoy it more. It did a good job creating a high level of suspense and mystery. The main character Ferec still comes off as an excellent agent, despite the fact that the shadowy enemies seem to consistently catch up to him and the defector he's protecting, despite him using every trick in his playbook, heightening the tension even more. How "they" are finding him becomes equal to the mystery of why "they" are searching for him so intensely and who "they" are.

The city of Wickhills is a great setting. It's magical in the true sense of the word - magic moves its streets around, makes walls appear at random, causes strange and dangerous creatures to live in its various environs. The different districts of the city are as varied and crazy as you'd want them to be. However, it's magical, not whimsical. It has dangers and slums and crime and pollution and homelessness just like any contemporary city would, so it feels gritty and more realistic than a typical fantasy city would.

That said, I really need to get attached to the characters to love a book, and the very qualities that make Ferec good at his job make him a rather unappealing main character for me. His job requires him to be detached, amoral, and have no priorities beyond his mission. He does an excellent job at this, but his professional detachment and unwillingness to reveal any details about himself make him a tough character to get attached to or care much about. There are many points in the story where it seems he might die and at one of these points I realized that I wouldn't have been that upset if he did. I'm not even sure Ferec would be that upset if he did. To be clear, I didn't want him to die; he just doesn't inspire much affection from the reader, so you aren't as emotionally invested in his journey, more frustrated by the mystery and obstacles he has to deal with.

Additionally, the cryptic nature of everything felt forced at times. There are numerous times where characters withhold vital information because "it's not time yet" or "you don't need to know" or even just "I'm annoyed and don't want to tell you." Some of it felt natural; some of it felt like it was just happening to drag out the mystery. The reveal of the overall danger to the city also just felt a little clunky to me. I can't really say more than that or I'll spoil a major aspect of the story.

Overall, if you think you'd like a fantasy spy story and you are ok with an emotionally detached main character, give this a shot. It's well written, but I much prefer the style of Butcher of the Forest to this.

[Kat]

I received a free copy from Tor Books via Netgalley in exchange for a fair review. Release date September 8th, 2026.

I adored Mohamed's Siege of Burning Grass, but the widely praised Butcher of the Forest did nothing for me, so I was interested to see where her latest would land. In Wickhills, Ferec is an agent for the city-state of Wickhills, helping the secret police round up traitors and dissuade potential rebels. When a mission goes badly wrong, Ferec suspects that there's a mole somewhere within the Seaborne—and the resulting investigation will embroil him in a battle over the fate of the city itself.

Wickhills is, as the title might suggest, a setting-first book where the city is a main character. The worldbuilding is spectacular, featuring a city that's a little bit of Ankh-Morpork and a little bit of Ennes' Works of Vermin but mostly very much itself. Mohamad has a talent for sneaking in unsettling little tidbits about the worldbuilding: the building in downtown keeps growing new pillars, the streetlights are some kind of creature, don't look into the six inches of water that floods this district or something will Get you. The worryingly organic architecture is paired with the city's tempestuous history and constant undercurrent of revolution barely held in check by the Seaborne, the secret police.

Ferec, our main character, holds sway over the plot by virtue of knowing the city better than anyone else. He's deeply amoral and apolitical, and is governed solely by a strongly held code of professional competence. He's worked for the Seaborne since he was a teen in a high mortality career, and he thinks he ought to feel something when he kills someone, but he never does. However, his complete emotional distance from other human beings makes the narration a little cold. Excellent characterization for Ferec, but it lacks the underlying melodrama that I'm fond of. Ultimately, this is a story about smashing convictionless Ferec against the truth of the Seaborne and the City, and what he will do if his blind loyalty to his profession is shaken. The bittersweet ending is the perfect conclusion to a truly excellent fantasy novel and its morally grey protagonist—it's not the sort of plot to be tied off in a happy bow.

A tautly plotted spy versus spy novel with a creeping atmosphere of paranoia set against the backdrop of first-class worldbuilding. The characterization is a little bit too cold for me to make it a standout favorite, but it's an excellent work of craft. Reminded me very strongly of Hiron Ennes' Works of Vermin from last fall.

[K. Hvostova]

A fantasy spy thriller?? Sign me up!! This one does not disappoint!! It reminded me a lot of a fantasy Watchman, or a bit like The Wolf Among Us.

The world building in this book is so rich, especially involving the city. The way the author weaves this setting, packing it full of details really makes it feel alive. It is super immersive!!

The characters also felt very real to me, especially in the dialogue, everyone’s voices were unique and there were these interesting interludes where the characters get to talk and explain things/plot elements/background. I think that although short, Ferec was my favourite cause leading up to this point there wasn’t a lot you knew about where he came from. Bardanes was also a standout character for me. I love me a manticore!

The plot is very exciting. I was enthralled by the premise of Ferec pursuing a mission that he was told is completely off the books, gathering a team, exploring new parts of the city to look for clues. The whole plot with the apocalypse-level magical weapon gets very good. I never felt like the plot was slow, rather it was very tense cause you never knew what was going to happen next, who they could trust, who was after them.

I think the only downside is that its very wordy, as in there are long, long paragraphs of details about the city, that can feel like the book is slowing to a halt, personally I just found it so interesting it did not bother me. But I could see it being slow some readers. I also think the different fantasy species could be a bit more fully realized, like while the city itself feels rich, the fact that there are vampires and wyrms and manticores is never truly fleshed out.

Either way, I look forward to more!

[Lynne]

I received this as an eARC via NetGalley. I previously enjoyed The Butcher of the Forest by this author.

You know how in really good, twisty spy stories, not only is every single organization against our hero (including their putative own), but it seems like the city itself is somehow throwing a monkey wrench into the works? This book is that, where the city is alive and is absolutely messing with you.

So. Fenec. He's a spy who has survived just about 10 years in Wickhills. His experience doesn't quite have a chance to tip into deep cynicism, just very reasonable caution. His agency stops problems before they have a chance to become visible. In theory. He's been assigned to babysit a scientist who may have accidentally created a city-destroying weapon, oops.

This is a far more complex assignment than it seems, of course.

This is one of those novels that pulls you along by the collar as you (and Fenec) try to figure out who can and cannot be trusted. And the answer is complicated in a very satisfying way.

A sharply-written, imaginative spy tale in a fantastical city setting that reminded me very much of the 1970s tv series The Sandbaggers, and I mean that as a compliment. Everyone in this story is smart. Everyone is competent. Everyone is tired, and everyone would very much like to avoid a lot of bloodshed if at all possible.

Oh, and the city has a mind of its own.

All of the characters are warmly and roundly drawn; they are grounded and have interior lives; they aren't just cyphers or generic baddies. That doesn't make them all good beings, necessarily. They are complicated characters doing the best they can to navigate a complicated world. And Mohamed manages to stick the landing without everything turning exceedingly grim.

Very enjoyable spy caper. ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Warmly recommended.

[Ashton Ahart]

Set in a richly imagined world diverse with characters of human and mythical variety, Wickhills is a lyrical novel immersed in a cold world of mystery. Following Ferec, a secret agent for an intelligence organization that is as infamous as it is unknown, the novel takes the reader deep into a gothic steampunk city. After recovering a package who turns out to be a smuggled man from a distant country, Ferec discovers his handler is going against the agency, and the city itself, to retrieve a high-level magical item that has the potential to destroy the world. Entangling himself with three other agents to create a team seemingly no one is happy with, Ferec has to use every resource he can to follow orders.

My problem with this book was that it was at times too smart for me. The language and dense descriptions slowed the pace and left me uninterested in the actual plot. The characters were all richly imagined and enjoyable to read about but at times the author would go on pages-long anecdotes about minute details that left me feeling isolated from the text. I enjoyed the atmosphere of the novel but the heavy writing and obscure descriptions made it hard to keep up.

That being said, this is a really interesting book, just not the one for me. I recommend it for those into high-fantasy steampunk worlds with rich literature and witty characters. Just be sure you have a lot of time on your hands to really dive into the text.

[J. L. R.]

Wickhills is a spy thriller in the guise of an urban fantasy novel, or maybe an urban fantasy novel in the guise of a spy thriller. You know the type: an agent for an internal security agency has a normal job go awry, plunging him into a web of conspiracy that leaves him unsure of who to trust and unsteady in his deepest convictions. He’ll have to rely on an unlikely assemblage of contacts and associates to survive and contain the threat from engulfing the world. After Premee Mohamed’s excellent The Siege of Burning Grass, a melancholic exploration of war and pacifism without easy answers and set in an evocative if obscured fantasy world, I was eager to dive into her newest one. While Wickhills contains the same inventive worldbuilding, I unfortunately found the story to be far more generic than what I know Mohamed is capable of. Mild spoilers below.

The strongest element of Wickhills is its setting. The eponymous city of Wickhills is one of six major cities in the world; a mysterious event in history has apparently left the world outside cities largely uninhabitable, forcing the entire world populace to flee towards the nearest city and settle in for good. The city itself is clearly meant to invoke London, from the Victorian era to the Cold War, though it thankfully spruces up that conventional setting with lots of small, fantastic details, such as unstable and shifting architecture, sleeping wyrms coiled around clocktowers, and a host of weird fantasy peoples that are never fully sketched out or categorized. There’s plenty more, but the most fun I had reading this was discovering them as I read, so I’ll hold off from writing more.

The story follows Ferec, an agent for the secretive government agency known as Seaborne, as he retrieves a package in a routine job. Turns out that the package contains a person; a refugee scientist from a rival city with a discovery that could destabilize the entire balance of power and threaten the world. When Ferec’s long-lived and imposing manticore handler Bardanes informs him that mission is not on the books, it leaves him paranoid, looking everywhere for enemies, even amongst his allies. Ferec assembles a crew as the novel goes on, though the plot machinations happen so quickly that they’re rarely given time to breathe and develop as anything more than rough archetypes. And the plot machinations themselves are lacking. Each beat roughly follows the same structure: Ferec & co. find themselves in a new part of the city, looking for info, when they’re attacked by mysterious enemies and forced to flee to the next location.

The spy thriller is a fun genre, and it’s clear that Mohamed wanted to try her hand at one, played relatively straight aside from the fantasy setting. It’s a solid book and a fun read, but I was let down by expecting more, especially as I know the author is capable of it. I don’t begrudge her wanting to play around in this more formulaic genre, but it leaves me wishing it was a more unique twist on the formula, or else expanded into something more ambitious.

If a propulsive thriller in a cool fantasy city is what you’re looking for, Wickhills is a good read and worth picking up. Despite my criticisms I did overall enjoy the read, and I’ll probably check out any sequels, hoping to see more glimpses of its interesting world. But if you’re quite familiar with the Cold War-ish spy thriller, don’t expect particularly compelling takes on that structure.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts expressed are my own.

Read more of my reviews at https://terrasomni.substack.com

[Laura]

This could have been a solid 4 star if this had fewer typos (some I'm not sure will be corrected by publication time), didn't have the epilogue (even if it's teasing a second book, it was too long), and edited out some of the infodumping.

The world building is interesting, and I loved that this was a multi-species book. There was one character whose species I didn't quite understand, and she's only there for a shot while (Maaz, if you're interested). The different neighborhoods, all with their own accents, were also fascinating -- a map might have been nice -- and that there was a circular neighborhood and one that was only accessed by going over a specific wall? Really creative.

Sadly, the story woven into it wasn't quite as fascinating and there were far too many times where the reason for Ferec's crew protecting something was just talked around, not given directly. While I understood why keeping him somewhat in the dark was useful for the plot, it simply confused things for this reader.

eARC provided by publisher via Edelweiss.

[Annie]

Oh, how I love a genre mash-up! Premee Mohamed blends fantasy with thriller in Wickhills, delivering a gripping story full of chases, disappearances, fights, and corruption. I wish more authors were doing what Mohamed and Robert Jackson Bennett are doing to spice up the fantasy genre. Throwing in elements from other genres into the possibilities of a fantasy world does a lot to generate lively, original stories that I devour when I get my hands on them. Right, enough gushing...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.

[Stephanie Cooke]

Wickhills an urban fantasy espionage that gives you exactly that. One of the joys of reading a Premee Mohamed story is her worldbuilding ability. Even for stories that are set in our world (ie. The Annual Migration of Clouds), her ability to paint a picture of what exactly we’re dealing with, without overcomplicating things, is a marvel. Mohamed brings that to Wickhills and introduces us to our MC, Ferec, who is having a very bad day at his job…to put it lightly. It’s a fast-paced story with high-stakes, and while some parts are a little dense to get through, this is well worth it. If you’re looking for a book that is exactly as advertised, in the best way, be sure to add this to your list.

[Hannah S.]

Thank you to Macmillan and Edelweiss for access to the e-arc!!

This book is an undertaking. Premee Mohamed does not hold your hand as she drops you into this fantasy world full of intrigue and espionage. Ferec is a deliciously complex character who loves his city and keeps himself separated from others as much as possible yet they sneak into his life and heart anyway. I was never sure where the story would lead or even if our characters would make it through to the other side. The city is as much a character as our agents and scientists. I'm sure there is more to be said, and more eloquently than I have managed, but I enjoyed this spy caper set in a beautifully unique fantasy world.