Review: Origins of Desire in Orchid Fens – Lynn Hutchinson Lee

Genre: Eco-fiction, horror, novella Published: Stelliform Press, April 2025 My Rating: 3/5 stars

"The fen belongs to itself. Like us, it protects its own. It is a force like no other. It has no mercy."

Have you ever had this experience of waking up from a dream, where you remember you sort of remember its ghostly outlines, but not enough to grasp what it was fully about? Maybe you remember it was a pleasant dream, or maybe there was something ominous about it, yet when you try to return to that memory, it’s just out of reach. That feeling is very close to what I felt after finishing Origins of Desire in Orchid Fens.

The story follows a young Romany woman’s life in a seemingly idyllic mining town that hides its secrets just below the surface. Orchid finds solace in a lush orchid fen where she doesn’t fear the villager’s judgement. Here, she meets not only her future husband Jack, but a group of “panni raklies”; the spirits of dead girls that haunt the waters in which they were murdered. Through them, Orchid learns they history of the town; one filled with violence inflicted upon the girls and the lands alike, in pursuit of profit. As her own desire for revenge intwines with that of the panni raklies, it becomes clear that all roads will lead to eventual blood in the waters...

Origins of Desire in Orchid Fens is told in lush prose and extremely short chapters, often not even a full page long. It adds to the distinct and ephemeral atmosphere I described at the start of my review, but it can also keep the reader from fully connecting to the story as a result. When you have imagery and language this slippery, it becomes hard for the story to stick, and I fear the novel will lose some readers here, regardless whether that was intentional or not.

For me personally, there were many elements to the book that I loved. Part folklore, part eco-fiction, coming-of-age with a ghostly touch, and all told through almost poetic prose: that’s basically a listing of my readers-catnip. Yet the intangibility of some of the images, the short chapters and the lack of character development in our protagonists kept me at a distance. The story never stuck with me, and whenever I put it down, I felt a little lost trying to pick it back up again.

I adore Stelliform Press and love how they publish eco-fiction that’s just a little outside the mainstream. I have yet to have a full miss with them. Yet with Origins of Desire in Orchid Fens, I can’t help but feel like I wanted to love this more than the sum of its parts, and I didn’t.

If dreamlike fiction with an ominous tone is your vibe, I recommend checking out this novel, or any of the previous works by Stelliform Press for that matter. I’m a big fan in general.

Many thanks to Stelliform Press for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

You can find this book here on Goodreads.