ANDY HEDGECOCK is entertained by a playful novel that embeds a fictional game at its heart
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On a Dark Night With Enough Wind by Lilla Pennant
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LILLA PENNANT’S real-life stories from the remote north Wales villages of Tremeirchion and Sodom — drawn from conversations she had with old residents back in the 1970s and ‘80s — have about them the faint whiff of witchcraft and paganism, allied to a nicely crafted atmosphere of rain and wind on the hillsides and moors thereabouts.
What they don’t have, though, is a great deal of substance. Despite vague allusions to long-held secrets that Pennant might be able to uncover, nothing much is ever revealed, at least in terms of old-time magic or druidic practices.
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