Book Review: A Necromancer Called Gam Gam by Adam Holcombe
A Necromancer Called Gam Gam is everything I look for in a novella. It is well-paced, meaningful and it isn’t dependent on a wider body of work to support it. It is hard for me to believe that this is Adam Holcombe’s first published work, because he writes with the grace of someone who has been telling stories their whole life. If you just want to know if this novella is worth your time, then let me stop you here.
It is.
The story of Gam Gam is also the story of a young girl called Mina, and I have nothing but praise for how well the character writing supports them. Gam Gam’s experience and compassion is evident right from when we first meet her, but it is given even greater depth when brought into focus with Mina’s anxiety and purity of purpose. These characters don’t exist just as puppets to string a story along, but as people whose complexity is only fully revealed when kept in each other's company. It is very clear to me that when Holcombe pulled these fateful companions out of his imagination, it was with the utmost consideration for how they might interact, which I think is the sign of a fantastic writer.
This book was designed to make you smile one moment and then cry the next. In that respect, it absolutely succeeds. I would have expected ‘cozy fantasy’ and ‘gripping emotional rollercoaster’ to maybe cause a bit of tonal whiplash, but surprisingly it works. I was charmed by Gam Gam’s penchant for knitting just as equally as I was devastated by Mina’s reckoning with grief and trauma. This story made me cry when few stories ever do, while also making me laugh when I needed to. Holcombe makes it look easy when I can assure myself that it is not.
For how well this novella tackles difficult topics, I did still have a hit or miss experience with it. I believe that on the whole A Necromancer Called Gam Gam handles trauma and the path to recovery quite well, but there were times when it seemed at odds with itself. Mina dealing with the loss of her father at the start of the story is something that is handled with clear humanity, but the realism of that portrayal seems to vanish when Mina is exposed to other trauma that is scarcely acknowledged. There were times, especially in the back half of the story, when I felt that the narrative was acting as though certain events were less distressing than they actually would be. It doesn’t exactly rob the stronger moments of their poignancy, but it did unfortunately leave the story with some rough patches.
Quality standalone novellas are a challenge to find, so I count my blessings that A Necromancer Called Gam Gam has come along to liberate my thirst like rainfall in a desert. It's not flawless, but that only means there's room for an already great story to get even better. Holcombe’s afterword promises more adventures to come, and frankly, if this is the baseline he sets, I can’t wait to see what he does next.
