Bog Queen

• Author: Anna North
• Genre: Historical Fiction
• Publication Date: October 14, 2025
• Publisher: Bloomsbury

Thank you to libro.fm for providing me with an ALC of this audiobook. I am offering my honest opinion voluntarily.

The story of an anthropologist’s monumental discovery and the clash of civilizations it sets off over the fate of the land that holds us.

When a body is found in a bog in northwest England, Agnes, an American forensic anthropologist, is called to investigate. But this body is not like any she has ever seen: Although its bones prove it was buried more than two thousand years ago, it is almost completely preserved.

Soon Agnes is drawn into a mystery from the distant past, called to understand and avenge the death of an Iron Age woman more like her than she knows. Along the way she must contend with peat-cutters who want to profit from the bog and activists who demand that the land be left undisturbed. Then there is the moss itself: a complex repository of artifacts and remains with its own dark stories to tell. As Agnes faces the deep history of what she has unearthed, she is also forced to question what she thought she knew about her talent, her self-reliance, and her place in the world.

Flashing between the uncertainty of post-Brexit England and the druidic order of Celtic Europe at the dawn of the Roman era, Bog Queen brims with contemporary urgency and ancient wisdom as it connects two young women learning to harness their strange strengths in a mysterious and complex landscape.

You know those books where the title just grabs your attention, and then you see the gorgeous cover and have to give it a shot? This was one of those for me. Although I majored in biology in college, a lot of my classes were cross-listed with the other social sciences, including the anthropology department. I transferred to a university in my junior year, after taking everything I could at community college (including the hardest classes), all of my general classes were waived, and I got to take all science electives. One of my favorite biology-anthropology classes was human osteology, where we learned about the human skeleton and how to read visual markers that can point to sex, age, childbirth, and even race. This allowed me to revisit those fond memories I have of my college classes.

This is a dual timeline novel, narrated by Lily Newmark, who seamlessly narrates Agnes’s own standard American accent and the variety of British accents that are featured in this book. She does a fantastic job with the story, and I had no trouble understanding even the accents that were a bit thicker than others. 

The first timeline is that of Agnes, in the present day. She’s working to identify a body that was found in a bog in England, and navigating a new job where she has to prove herself as a woman in a male-dominated field. Called in by a family member who believes the body may be that of her aunt, murdered in the early 1960s, Agnes isn’t there long before she realizes the body is a lot older than the one she was expecting to see. 

The other timeline is set about two thousand years ago, featuring a Druid Priestess who is powerful and influential. It’s clear early on that this is the life of the woman whose body was found in the bog, and North slowly exposes the experiences of this priestess, linking her to a web of spiritual and political intrigue. This allows room for the connections between Agnes and this priestess to arise, both in their personal and professional lives.

To start with, the priestess is never referred to by a given name, only “the Druid of Bereda.” Until reading this, I was under the mistaken impression that only males could be Druids, and didn’t realize that female Druids were significantly outnumbered by the males in the historical record. The priestess is undermined at times by perceptions about her capabilities, and Agnes also experiences this, although part of this might also be due to what reads as some neurodivergent traits, including her anxiety and awkward interactions with others that are second-hand cringe. It makes sense that she chose to work with the dead, and allow them to silently speak through her. Although I couldn’t help but think that these are the situations that allow for real-life mysteries to solve—what the identity of the person is, when they lived, and even how they died. North created a bond between Agnes and the bog body, adding increased impetus to her drive to uncover (no pun intended there) more information.

Along with the personal connections, each woman deals with unique factors in their own time, that reflect those of each other. The most clear one is Agnes living and working in England post-Brexit, while the priestess is serving as a community leaders navigating the push and pull of opposing political forces in the face of an invasion by the Roman Empire. While some called for not working with the Romans, others wanted to work together with the Romans in an attempt to wrest back whatever control they could. It dovetails nicely with the isolationism of England after Brexit, and ties these two women together across two millennia. 

Overall, this was a really interesting story, and I liked each of the timelines for different reasons. Reading about the priestess’s time and the catalysts for change in her timeline was fascinating for historical reasons and the way I’m drawn to reading about different spiritual traditions; but I also loved seeing Agnes working through her anxiety when a highly intelligent child arrives at the dig and basically forces her to interact. While I did feel plenty of second-hand cringe for Agnes at exactly how socially awkward she is, I think that characteristic not only made it possible for her to work with the dead in some way, but allowed her to find her dream job and become an expert. I will admit that I didn’t love the ending, which is more open-ended than I would have preferred, but that’s just my own personal opinion. However, it’s always nice to read about not just one badass woman, but two in very different times.

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