3.5 stars

Overall, I very much appreciated the meditative prose and multiple perspectives. I feel that the chapters focused on Agnes didn’t capture me as much as those from the Iron Age Druid and even the moss.

I love bogs, and bog bodies. I love history, and archaeology and anthropology where they concern ancient, difficult-to-know histories. I love women's stories, especially. I was so hopeful that I would love this book because it has all of these things, but I think, unfortunately, this book would have been much more fun if I didn't know anything about any of those topics.

Anna North gets quite a few things wrong, and her depiction of ancient Britain is heavily dependent on her own speculation and on the fact that she just made a bunch of stuff up. I thought the split perspective was interesting at first because it gave readers a chance to see a potential perspective for this fictional bog body, and I thought giving the moss its own POV chapters was also unique, but it all felt rather pointless and incredibly boring about halfway through. Not to mention how frustrating it was to read any of the "bog queen's" chapters and wonder, "Now why did North write THAT?"

This book was fine, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who actually knows anything about bogs and bog bodies, or to any anthropologists or anyone considering becoming an anthropologist, unless they're deliberately looking for a pretty bad depiction of anthropology. I would also never call this "historical fiction." If I could offer one piece of advice to the publishers, it would be this: change how you're marketing the book. Call it YA. Scrap the "historical fiction" genre tag. Then you're home free.

Bog Queen is haunting, atmospheric literary fiction where ancient mystery collides with modern unrest. Anna North weaves a lush, unsettling tale of a perfectly preserved Iron Age woman, the forensic anthropologist determined to uncover her truth, and the living forces, human and otherwise, fighting over the bog’s fate. A masterful blend of folklore, feminist power, and environmental tension, this is a novel that lingers like mist over dark water.

5 stars Haunting, poetic, and full of quiet rage. 🌫️🖤 Bog bodies, buried grief, ancient power. Felt like sinking into something sacred and strange. I’m obsessed.

This is a great book! I loved the interwoven timelines. I fell in love with these characters and their empathy. I will recommend this book to a lot of people.

Forensic anthropologist Agnes has been called to identify a body - originally thought to be a murder victim in recent decades, but in actuality, this body is thousands of years old. Enter, our Bog Queen. Told in alternating timelines and POVs, we follows Agnes in present day and a druid in Celtic Europe at the dawn of the Roman era. This book was totally unique. I was more invested in Agnes as a character, but at the same time, I felt like I learned so much from both POVs. This novel raises many unanswered questions about our duties to the past, to the dead, and to the Earth.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy.

A well written, interesting story. Couldn't put it down. Will recommend it to patrons. ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.

Anna North has given us a beautiful, thought-provoking, and ingenious entry into the fairly new Eco-fiction genre and a look at a period of history I have never read about. She takes the multiple viewpoint perspective and uses it in a way that amazed me. Her viewpoints are from two women both fighting for self-respect and to fit into their rapidly changing worlds. One is a new Druid in Celtic Europe around 50 BCE at the dawn of the Roman age. A second viewpoint is in 2018 from Agnes an American forensic pathologist, who is tasked with identifying and trying to determine what happened to the ancient body that was unearthed in a bog in northern England. Agnes is probably neuro divergent and though brilliant has trouble fitting in. The third voice is that of the moss bog which tells the story of our planet and our green spaces and what we come to lose if environmentalists lose their fight with big business interests. The prose is so beautiful I kept wanting to write down phrases. This is a literary masterpiece that is extremely relevant to the world we currently live in.

What a beautiful book. It has very likable female main characters. I would recommend this to a book club.

Super consumable historical fiction - I wish this was coming out right now because it would be an ideal beach-read-sell! The dual timelines are great - present day in the bog, an ancient body is discovered, excellently preserved and then back in the 1600s, the woman's life and what befell her. So good, will be an easy sell for sure.

This unique book lodged itself in my brain. As tightly-woven as the peat moss from which the titular body is pulled, this tale of two women who cannot and will not be anyone but themselves tackles everything from to climate to capitalism to the inevitability of change. North's impeccable prose slides down so easily that I thought the book may have been novella length before I checked the actual page count.

I found the transitions from the present story to the ancient past very awkward, so much so that I didn't feel drawn to continue reading. Unfortunate, because I found the protagonist a very engaging character. Also, North commits a Composition 101 no-no when she writes: "The Romans are ruthless. The lord at Clindon, a very strong and capable leader, he went to negotiate with them over some land near the Mouse River."
I had to give up right there.

BOG QUEEN is a delicately wrought, quietly moving story of progress and preservation—cultural, historical, and ecological. The narrative weaves past and present in a rich tapestry that depicts two intelligent women trying to see across time, one forward and one backward.

Agnes is a forensic anthropologist called to help with evaluating a body recovered from the bog. At first, it’s assumed to be the body of a woman who went missing fifty years ago, but Agnes realizes the woman is far older: her body has been mummified by the moss and peat all this time. Agnes’s story is interwoven with the story of a young druid, trying to lead her people through a period of change brought on by the arrival of the Romans to what is now the northern part of England. And it’s interspersed with the perspective of the moss colony itself, which has endured so many centuries of ecological change.

It’s a story that combines mystery, history, and a thoughtful meditation on how we value the world and its constituent stories, so many lost inevitably to time. I really enjoyed this. Thank you to the publisher for a free ARC through NetGalley.

This is a really interesting blend of mystery, eco-fiction, historical fiction, and general fiction that worked pretty well for me. In the present day we follow Agnes, a forensic anthropologist exploring the mystery of a bog body discovered in England. In the past timeline, we follow the woman who becomes said bog body, when she’s a druid in the Iron Ages. There’s a storyline involving environmental exploitation due to peat cutting and the moss itself exists as a character of sorts. I preferred the modern storyline to the past one, mostly because the language usage in the Iron Age sections felt too modern and threw me out of the past. I don’t really know how the author could have sidestepped that issue, so I’m trying not to be critical, but it was just something that affected my reading experience a bit. But the characters are well-built here and the story itself is really interesting. The cover is also stunning.

The Book 🌱📚
Haunting, raw, and strangely beautiful—this one got under my skin in the best way. In 2018, a forensic scientist is drawn into a chilling body case that feels eerily personal. In 50 BCE, a druid woman walks headfirst into danger, transformation, and power. Linking them across time? Moss. Yes, moss—observing, remembering, almost alive.

What struck me most was the deep interconnectedness—grief, memory, land, bodies. Whether it’s ancient past or modern day, the pain echoes. The silence does too. But this story doesn’t stay silent. It digs up what we’ve buried—willingly or not. And the moss? It’s more than backdrop. It’s a witness. A keeper. The Earth, quietly watching and whispering back.

I am extremely interested in the prehistory of the British Isles, and this book gave me inspiration of all sorts of new things to read about! I love Iron Age civilization, but that combined with the connective nature focus made this a clear winner!

American anthropologist, Agnes, is called in to study a bog body found in northern England. Perfectly preserved for 2,000 years, the finding fascinates the public and the archaeologists who want to examine the body and the surroundings. Local peat cutters are frustrated because they are being kept from, harvesting the peat they need to make money. And there are climatologists and scientists who have noticed something unusual in the layers of soil around the body. Add in local pagans who don’t want the body disturbed and Agnes has a veritable circus on her hands. This is a fascinating and often sobering reminder of how we view our world and our place in it’s ultimate survival or destruction