Witchmark
core novel 2018 The Kingston Cycle
Record
| First published | 2018 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.85 (16,807 ratings, collected 2026-09-14) |
| First-edition ISBN | 9781250162687 |
| Internal chronology | 1 |
Synopsis
Witchmark is set in Aeland, a lightly magical world modeled on post-World War I Britain, where Miles Singer, a war veteran and secret magic-user, works as a doctor at a veterans' hospital while hiding both his healing abilities and his true identity from a society that persecutes witches and binds those with strong magic to serve their own families for life. When a dying patient's cryptic last words draw Miles into investigating a string of suspicious deaths tied to a wider conspiracy, he is forced to risk exposing the very secrets he has spent years protecting. Aided by the enigmatic, aristocratic Tristan Hunter, Miles must confront forces that threaten not only his family's carefully guarded secrets but the safety of his country as a whole, all while trying to keep his own hidden powers from the authorities who would claim him.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Kingston Cycle
- Series: The Kingston Cycle core; position 1 of 3 in the series' recorded order
- Author: C. L. Polk
Awards (verified)
- World Fantasy Award (Best Novel), 2019: won
- Locus Award (Best First Novel), 2019: finalist; Confirmed as one of the year's nominees; exact numeric poll rank not corroborated by an authoritative source and left unregistered pending confirmation.
- Nebula Award (Best Novel), 2018: nominated; SFWA's own site files this under the 2018 award year (for 2018-eligible work).
- Aurora Award (Best Novel (English)), 2019: nominated; Lost to Armed in Her Fashion by Kate Heartfield.
- Lambda Literary Award (LGBTQ SF/F/Horror), 2019: nominated; 31st Annual Lambda Literary Awards. Lost to The Barrow Will Send What It May by Margaret Killjoy.
Notes
- From the series record (The Kingston Cycle): The complete trilogy, published by Tor.com Publishing (2018-2020). A gaslamp/Edwardian-inspired secondary world recovering from a war modeled on WWI; a feminist, political narrative about the uprising of a repressed underclass, with a distinct queer romance and murder mystery in each volume. Internal chronology equals publication order; no dispute found. No companion short fiction or novellas set in this universe were found -- the trilogy is the entirety of the Core Canon.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.
- Reading order, within the series The Kingston Cycle: position 1 of 3: next Stormsong (2019)
Sources
- The Kingston Cycle (Wikipedia)
- C. L. Polk (Wikipedia)
- Witchmark (Wikipedia)
- 2019 World Fantasy Awards Winners (Locus)
- Nebula Awards (SFWA), Best Novel
- 2019 Aurora Awards Winners (Locus)
- 31st Lambda Literary Awards (Wikipedia)
- Locus First Novel Award index (Worlds Without End)
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Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.