When Keturah follows a hart into the forest near the peasant cottage she shares with her grandmother, she soon becomes lost, and in more sense than one. For none other than Lord Death appears before her as she weakens from three days’ lack of food and water and despairs of ever finding her way home. His lordship is grim and forbidding, but Keturah is unwilling to die—she is only 16, after all, and yet to fulfil her lifelong wishes. All she wants is to wed her one true love and have a little cottage and a wee babe of her own. And so she makes a pact with his lordship—he will grant her one day to find her true love, and if she does not, she will return to him in the forest.

Her temporary reprieve finds her desperately searching among the men of her village for her one true love. Her friends, sweet Beatrice and pragmatic Gretta, help Keturah as best they can, even offering up the men they had themselves set their sights on. But Keturah cannot love Beatrice’s mournful Choirmaster nor Gretta’s widowed Tailor. Perhaps amiable Ben Marshall, who has the best garden and is tradition-bound to wed the Best Cook, is the one. To this end, Keturah sets herself to bake the best pies in the hope of winning Best Cook at the village fair. After all, the king himself is coming, and will grant a boon and bestow gold upon the one who delights him most at the fair. And hasn’t handsome young Lord Temsland of the manor opened his coffers to the villagers so they can cobble the muddy lanes and put on a show fit for the king and all his courtiers?

Lord Death has said that the plague would come, but Keturah is determined that her people survive and thrive. But when her innocent quest for lemons (for a pie to tempt the queen) seems to have brought the plague close to home, all appears lost. Her pleas to Lord Death fall on deaf ears, until she hit on the one talent she has—she spins him a tale, only to withhold the ending with which to bargain for another day, and then another. Soon, Lord Death’s patience wears thin. Can Keturah possibly find her one true love in the little time she has left?

Keturah and Lord Death is a beautifully-written medieval fantasy that will hold great appeal to young teenagers as well as adult readers who enjoy romance mixed into their fantasy. The writing is deceptively simple, at times lyrical, while the story-telling is exemplary, being surely plotted and brim-full of memorable characters (not just the protagonist but a host of well-drawn secondary characters, like the shifty sorceress Soor Lily and her seven gormless sons, mournful Choirmaster scarred by his overbearing, rule-bearing dead mother, perfect Gretta with her search for the perfect man); the author has the enviable knack of fleshing out secondary characters with short but shrewd and perceptive descriptions.

While this novel may be reminiscent of the works of award-winning fantasy authors such as World Fantasy Award winner Patricia A. McKillip and Robin McKinley, it harks back further to the writing of Lord Dunsany, with a passing nod to Scheherezade of the Arabian Nights. But Keturah and Lord Death has a charm and appeal all its own, not least because its fantasy romance carries with it a message of the inter-relationship between Life and Death. With this profound message at its core, the appeal of this novel transcends genres and should appeal to anyone who enjoys a good and satisfying read, though of course fantasy enthusiasts will find it most accessible and will be most charmed, as this reader was. In fact, my opinion is that this novel is on a par with those that have won World Fantasy Awards, and only wish it had, so that more readers will get to experience the best this genre can offer.

At under 200 pages, this may be a quick read, but the story is one to savour slowly. With its instances of humour as well as true pathos (the ending may well bring a tear or two to the eye), Keturah and Lord Death is a deeply involving read as well as a worthy addition to the fantasy romance canon. Highly recommended.