Saxon’s Bane
You cannot escape the past
Fergus Sheppard’s world changes for ever the day his car crashes near the remote village of Allingley. Traumatised by his near-death experience, he returns to thank the villagers who rescued him, and stays to work at the local stables as he recovers from his injuries. He will discover a gentler pace of life, fall in love – and be targeted for human sacrifice.
Clare Harvey’s life will never be the same either. The young archaeologist’s dream find – the peat-preserved body of a Saxon warrior – is giving her nightmares. She can tell that the warrior had been ritually murdered, and that the partial skeleton lying nearby is that of a young woman. And their tragic story is unfolding in her head every time she goes to sleep.
Fergus discovers that his crash is uncannily linked to the excavation, and that the smiling and beautiful countryside harbours some very dark secrets. As the pagan festival of Beltane approaches, and Clare’s investigation reveals the full horror of a Dark Age war crime, Fergus and Clare seem destined to share the Saxon couple’s bloody fate.
In June 2017 Saxon’s Bane reached #1 in Amazon Kindle’s ‘Ghost’ genre.
“Once there was a great classical tradition of rural British horror from MR James to The Wicker Man. Now Geoffrey Gudgion has revived the style, proving there’s still nothing as creepy as the countryside.”
Christopher Fowler, author of Hell Train and the Bryant & May mysteries
Reviews for Saxon’s Bane
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"Evoking the spirit of Dennis Wheatley and those Hammer Horror films where strangers aren’t wel-come in a tight-knit community – but with all of the characters and situations given a 21st century makeover – Saxon’s Bane is an effective creepy tale."
SciFi Bulletin
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"The gathering narrative is greatly gripping and the overall atmosphere absolutely harrowing. These elements are both bolstered by a deftly developed sense of threat from the past and the present, which come together to excellent effect in a bona fide worlds-collide conclusion. …[a] sure-footed debut … a terrific thriller made singular by its interaction with the past, and I’d rec-ommend it to anyone with a hankering for solid historical horror."
Niall Alexander, tor.com
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"An offering … that really does have a bite of its own. The concept within was wonderfully brought together… a book that I had enjoyed spending time with. The prose was solid, the characters felt like real people and when added to the overall arc really brought the whole concept to life. Definitely an author to watch"
Falcatta Times
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"Wonderful. … The fantastical elements are actually quite subtle and are handled with a very deli-cate touch. …It’s always interesting to read a novel that has that kind of ambiguous quality. This is the sort of fiction that when you finish you want to talk to other readers about. … an impressively solid debut"
Paul Holmes, The Eloquent Page
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"...wonderful characterisation and an impeccable evocation of setting … a highly engrossing and ac-complished narrative [and] a richly detailed and complex read that displays all the joys that wonder-fully written prose can evoke. Saxon’s Bane is the book to thrust into the hands of any know-it-all who claims that genre fiction cannot be literary."
Ross Warren, This Is Horror
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“Once there was a great classical tradition of rural British horror from MR James to The Wicker Man. Now Geoffrey Gudgion has revived the style, proving there’s still nothing as creepy as the countryside.”
Christopher Fowler, author of Hell Train and the Bryant & May mysteries
