It might be a bit niche, but there’s something about polyphonic novels set in a tight geographical location but ranging though time that I really like. I loved Alan Moore’s Voice of The Fire, Andrew Michael Hurley’s Barrowbeck and now Sarah Hall’s Helm. It’s a really good evocation of a place and the people who inhabit it over thousands of years, culminating in a glorious soaring sequence that will live long in the memory, all told in distinct voices and some excellent prose.

A wild epic of folklore exploring the mythic figure of Helm, manifesting in human life and experience as a wind that can drive a person mad. This ranges over time and people for the entirety of human history beyond now into the future. It is slightly sinister and weirdly alluring. It reads at times a little like an epic poem. The writing style gives the feeling of a creepy, everlasting omniscience and a sense of something weird and always slightly out of reach. You have to let yourself go into the flows and eddies of this book, and when you do, it's a richly rewarding reading experience.

'Helm' is one of those novels that's so phenomenally good it's difficult to know how to describe its excellence without reducing its power. Ambitious in its construct, breathtaking in its range, heartbreaking and hopeful in its message, 'Helm' had me captivated from the first page. The first sentence, in truth. Sarah Hall has somehow, by some magic, and her beautiful prose, brought a wind to life! A wind that has shaped humans and land alike through eons, a wind imbued with superstition, folklore, fear and timeless stories. Sarah Hall is basically a genius to be able to harness all this in her book. I am in awe.

Sarah Hall's latest novel, Helm, is a work about Britain's only names wind and the impact it has over centuries on people and the places it howls. Reading more like a collection of short stories connected by theme, Helm is both dazzling in it's scope but difficult to pin down. I felt blown through it's pages, carried on by Hall's majestic prose - do we expect anything less than brilliant from Hall? - and afterwards felt this a work one could easily dip in and out of and find something. There isn't much plot in the traditional sense, but there is much poetry in tone and style, and a true sense of the epic.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.