Once Was Willem

**From the international bestselling author of** ***The Girl with All the Gifts*** **comes a wildly original and enthrallingly dark medieval fantasy unlike anything you've read before – a fable of twisted folklore, macabre magic, and the strangest of found families.**
**2026 WORLD FANTASY AWARD WINNER FOR BEST NOVEL**
**"A masterpiece of medieval dark fiction." – Christopher Buehlman, author of** ***Between Two Fires***
**"A wild fever dream – monstrous and beautiful." – Seanan McGuire, author of** ***Every Heart a Doorway***
*Eleven hundred and some years after the death of Christ, in the kingdom that had but recently begun to call itself England, I, Once Was Willem, rose from the dead to defeat a great evil facing the humble village of Cosham. The words enclosed herein are true.*
*I speak of monsters and magic, battle and bloodletting, and the crimes of desperate men. I speak also of secret things, of that which lies beneath us and that which impends above. By the time you come to the end of this account you will know the truth of your own life and death, the path laid out for your immortal soul, your origin and your inevitable end.*
*You will not thank me.*
**"It's been a long time since a book has reached out and just entirely enveloped me in its world the way** ***Once Was Willem*** **did. Astounding, and I loved every moment of it." – RJ Barker, author of** ***The Bone Ships***