'Curious Physiologies', by Jay Neill

Hannah Chadwick is running from her past, but she just stumbled into London’s most dangerous secret.

A fierce, professional nurse, Hannah found herself unfairly blacklisted after speaking out against corporate misconduct. Desperate for work, she takes the job at a nondescript clinic just off Harley Street, treating patients with "rare conditions" for an eccentric abclynician named Julius Wayworthy.

But this isn't a normal medical practice. Hidden throughout the city, their world is defined by a mysterious energy source lurking in the tunnels of London's Tube. These are the LineFolk: thousands of creatures—from elegant haemovores to monstrous shapeshifters—who use the city’s network to conceal their true forms.

When Hannah witnesses her colleague, Axton Flynn, violently transform to save her life during a mugging, she learns two terrifying truths: she is a human working in a world of monsters, and her predecessor was brutally murdered.

Now, caught between the LineFolk’s lethal secrets and the growing curiosity of the Police, Hannah must quickly decide who she can trust. Because if Wayworthy hired her for a reason, that reason might just get her killed.

Welcome to the Underground. Don't stray from the lines.

In these days of urban supernatural fantasy, it’s rare to come across a book that feels a new and fresh as ‘Curious Physiologies’. I heard about Jay Neill on social media and took a look at his first short story featuring the Linefolk, ‘The Angel of King’s Cross’. That felt like the training wheels for this story, in which all of the limitations of a new author have been stripped away - and it’s glorious to see!

I lived and worked in London for many years, and it’s a pleasure to revisit via the hands of an author who clearly knows his stuff. Everything felt so very real and familiar as I walked down streets that I knew well with our characters - I worked for a short time on Harley Street, and know exactly the buildings, the green spaces nearby, and of course the intrinsic power of the Tube map.

This is a London mythology that survives much as the regular folk do. The ‘monsters’ work hard to keep their families fed and housed, live in close communities of their own and generally Get On. Those dwellers within the M25 do look out for each other, and this condenses that attitude even more tightly into the Lines as they reach down the centuries from the Roman founding of Londinium to present day.

Protagonist Hannah is immensely likeable, as well as smart and ethical - unfortunately aspects of character that don’t always stand one in good stead in a cutthroat city. But this leads to a twist of fate which aligns her with the secret magics beneath the street, and now she must work with her new colleagues to help save that entire world.

‘Curious Physiologies’ starts relatively slowly, allowing us to get used to this alternate world as Hannah does (although you’ll no doubt find yourself guessing what’s going on from the moment a rather bullish patient appears at the door of the clynic). Before I knew it, I was speeding through the pages at the same time as not wanting the story to end. This is an adventure with action, chases, a covert policeman (yes, akin to Ben Aaronovitch, but very much his own person) and a battle against the power of Big Business that would fit any regular mainstream thriller perfectly.

This is a London I know and the people I wish I’d known when I was there. It’s so easy to imagine dryads still in the trees of Bloomsbury Square, and I often heard pigeons referred to as ‘pavement fairies’. I know this book will be lurking in the back of my mind next time I visit - that Tube platform heat, smell and screech have just a bit more meaning now, and I’ll be checking for trolls beneath Hammersmith Bridge.

Jay Neill takes a city full of unique magic and offers us a hand to join him there. I do hope you will. And I can’t wait for Book 2!