Fayne: Ann-Marie MacDonald

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Fayne had a fondness for the paladin Kalen Dren, although she was willing to kill him to protect herself if necessary. Together, they devised a routine of impersonations, and won a talent contest in 1940, after which they appeared on Jack Payne's BBC radio show, Your Company is Requested. Overall, I’d recommend this to those who love beautifully-written, compelling historical narratives with strong characterisation – you get to know the main players here very well and they are credible and interesting. Almost as if Ann-Marie MacDonald herself is a marsh sprite and cast this intoxicating story of gender identity from its pages. The best use for Fayne is in unkillable Clan Boss teams where her low defence numbers do not impact her damage output.

By way of answer, he laid before me a sheet of vellum whereon was depicted an asymmetrical chart divided into squares, in each of which appeared words – many unfamiliar – accompanied by initials and numbers. Charlotte is desperate to travel to Edinburgh and study medicine, another dream denied her on the basis of sex, so instead, her father hires a tutor for her so that she may learn and study as if she were a boy.She revels in the moorlands and has learned the treacherous and healing ways of the bog from the old hired man, Byrn, whose own origins are shrouded in mystery. Fayne spent much of her time on preparing to get revenge on Ilira, whether through spying on her, destroying her reputation, or training in fighting and magic to defeat her in combat. It becomes a generational tale, reminding me of Downton Abbey, at times, where it’s the last of the aristocrats and the changing of the country, doing away with old notions and old ways of life, and old ways of thinking, too. The first section of just under 200 pages was a slow burn but I loved having that time to get to know Charlotte. It was so easy to get lost in this story of fortune-hunting, marriage, heir-getting, women labelled mad and incarcerated on the flimsiest of excuses, foggy moors and bogs, myths and legends, and identity….

He also succeeded Nicholas Parsons as straight man to comedian Arthur Haynes, and then, for twenty years, worked as straight man to Norman Wisdom in succession to Jerry Desmonde.

The procs are independent from one another, each hit has their own chance to proc as I have seen several variations to confirm they’re not linked.

Fayne finally found a suitably dramatic opportunity to act, and attacked Ilira atop the roofs of Westgate during a thunderstorm. And yet, the ponderous grid of the Tay Bridge had appeared sounder to the untrained eye than the elegant geometry of the Forth Bridge. At first I assumed it was a visual bug that for some reason just repeated the damage numbers and CB passive on 2nd hit. She revealed her true identity and form to Ilira, and accused the moon elf of murdering her mother, with Ilira's sympathetic response only enraging her further.Charlotte Bell is the daughter of Lord Henry Bell, and as a result of an invisible yet deadly illness, she has been confined to the grounds of her family estate, Fayne. However, when the tutor uncovers something mysterious about Charlotte, and the Bell family, Henry decides to take matters into his own hands and take care of the problem, before Charlotte realizes that it exists. This is most evident in the scenes that deal with Charlotte’s connections to Fayne and – in particular – the bog and moorlands around the house. You never know who to trust or who will betray another and it’s not always clear where the power lies.

For me, the strength of the novel lay in the character of Charlotte – raised as a (lively and unconventional) girl, before being shoved into constricting female fashion to prepare her for ‘womanhood’.

It slowed down a bit somewhere in the middle for me but soon picked up again and galloped along to the finish. When Charlotte's appetite for learning threatens to exceed the bounds of the estate, her father breaks with tradition and hires a tutor to teach his daughter "as you would my son, had I one. As to the strengths, well as a lover of 100 pages novellas who usually regards anything over 300 pages as excessive, this held by interest for almost all of its 700+ pages, with the exception of the rather bolted-on modern day epilogue which felt heavy-handed and unnecessary.