The Fossil Door

Mysterious Powers #2

by Celia Lake

He wants to know why. She wants to belong.

Gabe was born into privilege - money, a loving family, and encouragement to follow wherever his curiosity leads. Assigned to help investigate a failed magical portal in the Scottish Highlands in 1922, he's more than up for the challenge. He won't let an old injury - or the rumours of a lethal magical beast - get in the way of solving the problem.

Rathna, the Portal Keeper he's been assigned to assist, is not at all what he expected. From their first meeting, it's clear that she's skilled, with a rare talent for magical energy. Her brown skin, the way she doesn't talk about her family, and her prickly insistence on proper form leave Gabe wondering, but she refuses to talk about anything other than their work.

As Gabe and Rathna begin to investigate, mystery piles on mystery. The portal is on the side of a steep mountain for no good reason. There's an unknown man asking questions about Rathna's family. Even getting a drink in the pub has risks.

As they begin to trust each other and share their secrets, Rathna becomes sure Gabe will disappear as soon as their work together is done.

The Fossil Door features a ferocious desire to learn why things are as they are, a London-born Bengali heroine, awe-inspiring geology, life-changing secrets, and chosen family. Set in the magical community of the British Isles in 1920s, the Mysterious Powers series can be read in any order, and each book ends with a happily-ever-after (no cliffhangers.)

Genres: Fantasy, Romance, Historical, Historical Fantasy, Mystery, Historical Fiction, Historical Romance

353 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 3, 2021

About the author

Celia Lake spends her days as a librarian in the Boston (MA) metro area, and her nights and weekends at home happily writing, reading, and researching.

Born and raised in Massachusetts to British parents, she naturally embraced British spelling, classic mysteries, and the Oxford comma before she learned there were any other options.

Reviews

[Sara R]

This is my third Celia Lake in a row and while they're far from perfect I sort of... love them?

There are definite writing quirks, like:
- the dialogue is idiosyncratic, full of fragments and sentences which all characters say (like, 'moment')
- older heroine/younger hero, hero an aristocrat/well-off, heroine struggling to fit in because of class and/or race and/or life situation
- tendency to get lost in the minutiae of the investigation or whatever hobby the characters have
- sometimes the editing is not... great

But. I love them 🤷‍♀️. There is something so gentle, so kind, so thoughtful about them. They're cosy and incredibly soothing but also the characters stay with me, which honestly almost never happens with romances.

This was a slower-than-slow burn with really likeable characters: Gabe, bright and nervy and brilliant, who was frankly adorable (and props for demisexual MC though I never like the sex scenes here); Rathna was intelligent, curious, and level-headed but with a spark to her.

[Lark of The Bookwyrm's Hoard · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars Even better than Carry On. Review to come.

[Virginia Rounds · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've often found that there are truly amazing musicians that fly completely under the radar. And the same is apparently true for books because this is head and shoulders above many, many, many books.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of things I loved about this book:

Gabe is 100% respectful and supportive, something Rathna really hasn't experienced before. Also, the book has plausible reasons why he is so aware that this could be a problem for her.

Both of them are incredibly intelligent and intellectually curious.

The magic of the portal they are sent to fix is based on stone, and so the different types of rock and fossils in the area play a role. There's cool geology! Yay science.

Science-minded ppl having sex for the first time is probably not yet a trope but should be. Rathna is all, "Let's experiment, make observations, and get better."

Gabe is demisexual: he hasn't ever been interested in sex or relationships before. Once he comes to care about Rathna, he feels sexual attraction for the first time. So we get the virgin hero trope, and also much-needed asexual representation. (I can't speak to the accuracy of the demi rep, so please LMK if the rep is problematic.)

Found-extended family!

Real talk about what it might mean for a white aristocrat to marry a brown orphan daughter of immigrants.

[Lindsay · Rating 3 out of 5]

I mean, if you like Celia Lake, you’ll like this book. But I found it to be a bit slow going in the middle. I didn’t quite understand what attracted them to each other, aside from both being lonely. I do really enjoy these books, though, and will keep reading them. The solid magic system and values of care and inclusion make them highly enjoyable and re-readable.

The geology and Scotland bits were interesting, but on the whole I found it a bit scattered, what with also fitting in an Indian heritage subplot. I found it confusing that there was a young Indian man looking for Rathna, and she was freaking out about it, and it was part of the suspense plot. Then suddenly he was revealed as an unknown cousin, and it was part of the finding-her-identity theme. Then the reader never gets to actually meet him. Is he a character in a later book?

These books are so interwoven as parts of a larger universe that it’s hard to know when knowledge gaps are author goofs and when they come from the fact that I haven’t read all the books yet. And I still haven’t figured out what constitutes a series arc. Same time period? Same larger mystery? Not same family grouping I don’t think.

(Also, the hero Gabriel was introduced as being Gabrielle mistakenly in a letter to the heroine Rathna, and for the longest time I thought it meant that he was transgender. No, it just meant that people in his profession were often assumed to be women, and that was the joke, but I didn’t get that until the end. So I was confused the whole time as to when it would be revealed that he was transgender.)

[Anne Libera · Rating 4 out of 5]

I very much this - the second book I've read from this author/series. Gabe has a quality that reminds me of Bujold's Penric, a little bit nervy, brilliant, and generous with all he is. Rathna is a bit more of a cipher for all much of the novel is from her point of view. As with Carry On, the mystery to be solved is almost beside the point. It gets solved and then there is more story to tell but not so much "plot."

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the world that Lake has created - a 1920s magical Britain. Each of her books has a focus on a different couple and a different slice of the world although there are sometimes overlapping characters.
The Fossil Door features Gabe, the grown son of a couple from an earlier book and Rathna, a Bengali woman living with a Jewish mentor in London trained as a portal keeper. The pair meet when they’re sent to rural Scotland to figure out why the portal there stopped working. I found Rathna a bit unpleasant at first - unusually so, Lake's characters are almost invariably kind, competent and polite- but Gabe is a delight and eventually Rathna warms up.
As is usual in these books, the mystery is fairly gentle, the bad guys are pretty easily defeated, and the romance is sweet (although there is an on page sex scene.) In this book, the romance is definitely secondary to the mystery and is very clearly friends to lovers.
The real fun of the books is learning more about the world and getting a view of good people working together to make things better (with magic). Lake's work often deals with issues of difference - racism/ prejudice against Rathna, Gabe's disability/chronic pain-he uses a cane due to an injured ankle, has ADHD and is demisexual. The research in these books is fantastic and this one also has a lot of interesting explanations of how magic works in this world.

[Allison Henle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked most of this book, but the heroine's anxiety really got to me after a while. (This is a tribute to the author's writing skills.)

[Jane Ashford · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been enjoying all of Celia Lake's historical fantasy romances. Her world of Albion and her characters are lovely.

[Kaalatzvya · Rating 3 out of 5]

A cost read but not quite compelling

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the perfect cozy fantasy for my current mood. I bought this book ages ago but never got around to reading it and now I'm kicking myself. The plot wasn't perfect - the conclusion of the mystery is somewhat anticlimatic and takes place off page, but I really enjoyed the characters and the world building.

[Marsha Valance · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1920s Albion, the portal-keepers guild maintains the magical doorways built by the Fae, while the Penelopes (the Albion Guard's problem-solvers), investigate anomalies that affect Britain's magic-users. Mistress Rathna Stone, raised in Britain of Bengali heritage, is a portal keeper; Gabriel Edgarton is a land heir from an old Guard family, & a Penelope. Together they are assigned to determine why a remote portal in northern Scotland has ceased working. As they investigate, they fall in love.

[ReadKnitHoard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delightful. Slow, steady, gentle, intriguing, intelligent, feel-good, emotionally satisfying.