The Thief on the Winged Horse – Kate Mascarenhas

I really loved Kate Mascarenhas’s previous book The Psychology of Time Travel. The way she crafted complex and very distinct characters and narrative was something that I took away as a key part of her writing. As a result I was very excited to read her next offering.

The Kendrick family have been making world-famous dolls since the early 1800s. But their dolls aren’t coveted for the craftmanship alone. Each one has a specific emotion laid on it by its creator. A magic that can make you feel bucolic bliss or consuming paranoia at a single touch.
But then, one night, the family’s most valuable doll is stolen. Only someone with knowledge of magic could have taken her. Only a Kendrick could have committed this crime…

Much like Mascarenhas’s debut, The Thief on the Winged Horse has a strong feminist viewpoint. While the Kendrick business was set up by three sisters, over time it was quickly taken over by male descendants and the women were excluded and demoted to designing the non-magical elements of their products. Only men became Sorcerers.

I found it interesting that most of the purchasers and collectors of the dolls were male. Possibly this was a comment on modern-day masculinity meaning that many men don’t allow themselves to feel strong emotions – particularly “feminine” ones – organically.

This is a “whodunnit” story. There is a scene in particular, after the theft of the most prized doll, where the entire community and their guests are held on the eyot – the small river island on which the Kendricks and their descendants have lived for generations – while the police question them, which felt like an homage to Agatha Christie and other classics in the crime and mystery genre.

There are three main POVs within the book – Larkin, the newcomer to the eyot who holds a previously unknown claim of Kendrick heritage; Hedwig, who is daughter of the tavern’s landlady and the housekeeper of the head of the business, Conrad; and Persephone, daughter of Briar, Conrad’s alcoholic twin brother, who dreams of becoming a sorcerer despite her gender blocking her career path.

Each one of these characters are fully-formed, complex, and distinct. Each is very interesting to read, and their flaws in particular are unwrapped throughout the story, leaving the reader feeling unsure who exactly they are (or are supposed to be) rooting for, especially when conflicts occur between them. Through the different perspectives, the reader tends to learn of things just before the other characters do, leaving plenty of mystery to remain engaged with.

Just as in The Psychology of Time Travel, there is LGBTQ representation in this book. It’s not a driving force for the plot, and its mention happens mostly in passing, but it is there and is from key characters. I also personally read at least one of the main characters as neurodivergent, however this isn’t explicitly explored within the story.

Immediately within the first chapter, I was drawing comparisons between this book and Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield. Despite being set in totally different eras, each book is about a small insular community, set on the River Thames in Oxford. Parallels extend beyond that, to the magical surrealism that exists while otherwise set in the real world, and to narrative devices including the use of a local tavern as a key setting. The books also share a similar feeling of fairytale-like whimsy. I’ll say now that I was a big fan of Once Upon A River, and as a result recommend The Thief on the Winged Horse to anyone else who enjoyed it.

My only main critique was that the pacing was a bit off, which was particularly noticeable in one section towards the end of the book where it speeds up so much as to disorientate.

Other than that I really enjoyed this book though, and Kate Mascarenhas has cemented herself on my list of authors whose future work I will actively seek out.

Rating: 4/5

(An ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thoughts are my own.)