Book Review: The Society of Unknowable Objects by Gareth Brown

The world of unknowable objects has been quiet for decades. Yet three members of the secret society dedicated to finding and protecting magical items from the outside world still gather in a bookshop every six months for their biannual meetings. It’s at one of these meetings that Frank Simpson, the longest-standing member of the Society of Unknowable Objects, reveals that a new artefact has been found in Hong Kong. He sends the society’s newest member, Magda Sparks, to investigate, setting in motion a chain of events that will change the future of the Society forever.

Arriving in Hong Kong, Magda meets a charming Chinese man who shows her an artefact in the form of a chess piece. But the thrill of their discovery is ruined when they’re confronted by an assassin who knows all about unknowable objects, after one was stolen from him a decade ago. Magda is forced to flee, returning to London only to learn that she’s not the only member of the Society who has secrets, and that everything she thought she knew about the group’s mission – as well as its history – is a lie. Her discoveries will take Magda and her allies across the Atlantic – not in pursuit of an unknowable object, but an unknowable person.

As Gareth Brown himself admits in his acknowledgements, second books are often much harder to write than the debuts that came before. Though you wouldn’t know it from reading The Society of Unknowable Objects. Following on from last year’s The Book of Doors – a twisty contemporary fantasy that was a testament to the magic of books – Brown’s second novel is a gripping, fantastical story that moves at a brisk pace, whisking readers from a cosy bookshop in London to the bustling cityscape of Hong Kong to a forgotten town in the deep south of America. It’s full of impossible magic, damning secrets and ordinary characters wrestling with extraordinary objects. But the best element of this story is its dark, cinematic heart, which explores what happens when god-like power is placed in the wrong hands.

Brown weaves an intriguing mystery but he also gives readers a group of flawed and multi-layered characters who aren’t just protecting the objects from the world, they’re also trying to protect the world from the objects. As our eyes into the Society, Magda is such a believable and relatable protagonist. Throughout the book, she struggles with loss and grief and the realisation that even the people closest to us keep secrets. Yet even when her trust is tested, her loyalty to the Society is unwavering. Her selflessness is such a contrast to the book’s other POV, the killer antagonist with a complete lack of compassion and humanity. Brown sends these disparate characters on a tense cross-continent race against time and readers can almost hear the ticking clock as it counts down to disaster.

The Society of Unknowable Objects reads perfectly as a standalone but, being set in the same universe as The Book of Doors, it also offers a small cameo at the very end that hints at a crossover book in the future. Let’s hope it won’t be too long before Gareth Brown brings the characters from both books together for more fantastical, globetrotting adventures.

★★★★★

The Society of Unknowable Objects was published by Bantam on 7 August 2025