Rose’s mom has jilted her before, so she was already hesitant about this trip to Scotland. It’s no surprise when she finds herself traipsing around alone, hoping to run into her wayward mother. It’s a bigger surprise when a spell-gone-awry pulls her into early modern Scotland—and into the gaze of a strapping young blacksmith named Callum MacGregor.
Broadly taking its cues from the seminal Outlander series, Veronica Wolff’s ACROSS THE PRESSING DARK is a less complex but still entertaining romp through a Scottish historical romantasy. In many ways, the text is hitting its marks and having fun doing so. An early apparition gives the reader an opportunity to buy in or not, and sequences like exploring a spooky graveyard on a stormy day are on-the-nose but inviting. The real star is the prose, which sensitively renders not only the contours of 17th-century Scotland but also Rose’s interior life. Her emotions are often visceral, as when “the air sharpens on [her] tongue,” or a “thin blade of fear slides between [her] ribs.” The ongoing B-plot involves Rose trying to understand magic and find a way home, a process of “picking through their conversations like a beachcomber sifting through sand.” The prose also isn’t shy about Callum’s physique, adding just enough spice to keep things interesting (although there’s never any real question about where the plot is going).
ACROSS THE PRESSING DARK sticks closely to its established genre conventions, and this does leave it behind some of its peers in interest and complexity. Most notably, the text is entirely a classic homosocial triangle between the simple, hardworking Callum and the petty-aristocratic Hamish, privileging Rose’s romantic relationship with Callum over all other relationships. This gives the story a one-note feeling, and although that one note is well-played, it’s not particularly interesting. At times, this is narratively and thematically frustrating: Rose’s evolving relationship with (and understanding of) her absent mother is a far richer opportunity than anything Callum provides. At other times, this is simply sad: when Rose considers what she might miss about the 21st century, she never even mentions any friends.
This also has deeper thematic implications. With Rose’s feeling that “it’s exhilarating to simply let go and give control to someone else for a while,” or her insistence that she’s “never felt so alive” as she does with Callum despite “the grueling work, the poverty, the hunger and uncertainty,” the text veers dangerously toward conservative fantasies about the past and the present—including ideas about women’s domesticity. This is only the first installment in a larger story, however, and it remains to be seen how continuations develop and resolve these problems.
For established fans of the genre who want the comfort of classic stories in a modern voice, ACROSS THE PRESSING DARK will check all the boxes.
Veronica Wolff’s ACROSS THE PRESSING DARK isn’t breaking the mold, but it’s a solid and simmering take on the Scottish historical romantasy.
~ Dan Accardi for IndieReader