TITLE: The Black Fire Concerto
AUTHOR: Mike Allen
294 pages, Ruadán Books, ISBN 9798991258753 (paperback, e-book, audio)
MY RATING: 5 stars out of 5
Mike Allen’s The Black Fire Concerto is one of those novels that lives in the liminal space between genres: it is part body horror, part dark fantasy, part folk horror, with a bit of possible post-Apocalyptic Earth thrown in, along with, at unexpected moments, the kind of whimsy you’d expect from a Disney late 60s-early 70s animated movie with voice work by Phil Harris (you know the movies I mean. You’re probably singing a song from at least one of them right now…)
Let me explain.
The Black Fire Concerto is the story of Erzelle, a girl conscripted into service by the very people who murdered her family to play her harp for rich patrons who frequent the ghoul-infested riverboat where Erzelle lives and serves. Her life is a never-ending cycle of playing and waiting to be murdered herself. Until the arrival of Olyssa, another musician, changes everything and leads Erzelle into Olyssa’s quest to find her missing sister Lilla.
From the start, the author’s expertise with body horror is on full display: the ghouls glimpsed in the opening chapter are grisly enough, but they’re just the start of an increasingly disturbing sequence of creatures that are less and less human, creatures made out of body parts from actual humans (and other living, or formerly living, things as well). And then there are the mysterious Grey Ones, who call to mind classic images of faceless harbingers of death like the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, if the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come spent all of his time harvesting bones from interred dead bodies. When I say that Mike Allen’s work often makes me physically uncomfortable, I am not exaggerating. (See my reviews of his short story collections Aftermath of an Industrial Accident and Slow Burn and his novella “The Comforter” in the anthology A Sinister Quartet).
The dark fantasy/folk horror comes into play with the setting, which at least after the opening scenes, is mostly overgrown forests with hidden towns of unusual residents and stark mountains with endless tunnel systems in which any manner of horror may lurk. And both are equally dangerous. The landscapes Erzelle and Olyssa traverse are familiar in their overwhelming vastness and claustrophobic tightness and yet feel alien and unfamiliar at the same time. The sense of familiarity is heightened by the hints, through place names, that this world might actually be our own Earth after a science/magic apocalypse altered it and the people in it.
So where does the Disney-like whimsy come in? The character of Reneer and his fellow vulpines: fox-humans. Reneer is a trickster, debonair, charmingly daring, and brings a bit of lightness and playfulness to most of the scenes he’s in (he is, really, a scene-stealer and a redhead and yes, if you know me, you know I want to marry him). Braeca is his female childhood best friend whose quieter personality nicely balances Renier’s. I know it sounds like this would disrupt the feel of the novel, but it really doesn’t; it enhances the surreal, of-this-world-but-not, tone that permeates the book from start to finish. (And apologies to the author, but I cannot help reading Reneer and Braeca’s dialogue in the voices of Brian Bedford and Monica Evans. If you know, you know.)
Reneer is a scene-stealer, but not overwhelmingly so. Erzelle and Olyssa are absolutely the heart and focus of this novel, two strong female protagonists with a wonderful, complex, and not-perfect teacher/mentor relationship. Through them, Allen delves into what happens when we’re granted power we’re untrained to wield, when a mentor lets us down, when sibling rivalry turns ugly, when generational trauma rears its ugly head, and when a choice must be made and all of the available options are bad. The antagonists they encounter run the gamut from petty controlling bureaucrats to body-horror monstrosities to magic-wielders with damaged psyches, and the women are incredibly creative with the way they utilize their music-based magic to overcome all of these obstacles (with quite a few close calls along the way).
I loved this book, and I’m really hoping there’s more to come in this world. I do not think that Erzelle, Olyssa, Reneer, and Braeca’s stories are over just yet.
For those in the New York City area, Mike Allen will be discussing The Black Fire Concerto at Kew & Willow Books this Saturday, July 12th, at 7:00 pm, in conversation with author C.S.E. Cooney (who also happens to be the audiobook narrator). And I will be there as well, strictly as an audience participant.
I received an advance reading pdf of this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. I am way behind on posting reviews of ARCs I’ve read; The Black Fire Concerto was released on April 22, 2025.