Protecting Cheesyfee on Goodreads

The villain is the most frightening kind, reasonable-sounding. Alan Agrave's speech about shock doctrine, manufactured chaos and who benefits from collapse isn't the ranting of a cartoon bad guy. It's calm. It's logical. It's the kind of thinking that actually exists in the world and the author knows it. He's not even particularly angry about losing. That's what makes him chilling. The scene where he appears on screen to "congratulate" everyone on Cheesyfee's success and then quietly threatens them all had me reading slower just to catch every word.

Howard Miller

1 review7 followers

Brenda doesn't trust Gwydion. Not even a little. She watches this strange, intense young man become central to her daughter's life and she can't explain what he is or where he came from and she doesn't like it. Her protectiveness of Branwen is so recognizable and so human in a book full of extraordinary things. The moment near the very end where she and Gwydion lock eyes across a room and something unspoken passes between them, no words, no resolution, felt more real than a dozen dramatic speeches would have.

Vernon Morrow

1 review7 followers

Talli is one of those characters who shows up quietly and then becomes someone you'd genuinely miss if they were gone. Steady, reliable, present when it matters. There's a scene on the barge near the end where he breaks down crying and says Gwydion was his mate, one of his only real ones, because he's too weird for most people, and Gwydion was weirder. I laughed and then immediately felt awful about laughing. That's good writing. That small moment said more about both of them than pages of backstory would have.

Cynthia Salter

1 review4 followers

The scenes where Sorcha and Gwydion communicate telepathically while Branwen monitors the data are some of the most quietly intimate in the book. He tells Sorcha he's fallen in love and asks if that's permitted. She tells him Branwen loves him too. He says he thinks she loves him in spite of his magic, not because of it. Sorcha says that's not what she sees at all. There's so much gentleness in those exchanges. Sorcha is the person who sees him most clearly and she handles that responsibility beautifully.

Erin Conolly

1 review3 followers

John Johnson, the cheerfully skeptical physicist who ends up begging to study how magic works, is an absolute delight. He's completely materialist and completely unable to deny what's in front of him and he handles that contradiction by just leaning into the science of it enthusiastically. His relationship with Gwydion is funny and warm, at one point Gwydion telekinetically steals his beer and John's response is "I didn't ask you to be a thief." The book

Lava Jansson

1 review3 followers

June 2, 2026 5 *

Late in the book Agrave implies he and Ganna were once close. Very close. Gwydion rounds on her immediately. The conversation that follows is one of the most charged in the whole novel, old betrayals surfacing, accusations made carefully, Ganna unable to promise she won't be tempted and saying so out loud. It would have been easy to write her as simply loyal or simply treacherous. Instead she's a person genuinely wrestling with herself. "I don't know" is the most honest thing she could have said and somehow it's also the most reassuring.

Nellie Keel

1 review2 followers

Nobody prepared me for Merlin being genuinely baffled by the Tube. Or spending hours watching Downton Abbey and Fringe back to back and not being able to tell them apart. Or Googling things with intense concentration like it's the most powerful magic he's ever encountered, because to him it basically is. The comedy of a 1500-year-old man discovering the internet is perfectly balanced against everything heavy in the book. He never becomes a joke. He's just a person encountering a world that moved on without him and trying to catch up.

David McIntyre

1 review

One of the most interesting tensions in the book is that Gwydion doesn't entirely like his magic. He's the most powerful sorcerer alive and it makes him uncomfortable. When Branwen asks why he's so negative about it he says he thinks she loves him in spite of it, not because of it. Sorcha pushes back. The book never fully resolves this and I think that's right. He's a man who can stop a neutron bomb with his bare hands and still can't fully accept what he is. That contradiction is what makes him so compelling.

Joseph Kirkwood

1 review

Nahida drives the van. Nahida arranges the clothes that somehow fit perfectly. Nahida shuts Ganna down with one word when she's being unfair to Gwydion. Nahida does the washing up quietly while hard conversations happen around her. She is the person who keeps everything functional and asks for nothing back and the book honors that without turning her into a saint. She's just someone who decided a long time ago what she stands for. Those characters are rare and valuable and I was glad she was there.

Anthony Cantu

2 reviews7 followers

May 28, 2026 5 *

1500 years old and still somehow the most lost person in the room. Gwydion discovering the washing machine, panicking on the Tube, getting emotional at a Shakespeare play, I wasn't ready for how funny and heartbreaking he would be in the same breath. He carries every memory from every life he's ever lived and it weighs on him in ways he never quite says out loud. By the end I was completely attached and the ending absolutely destroyed me.

Sharon Ragsdale

2 reviews7 followers

May 28, 2026 5*

Branwen Lewis has three doctorates, no patience for nonsense, and eats fish and chips for breakfast without apology. She doesn't believe in magic even while watching it happen directly in front of her. She's the kind of brilliant that makes other people feel small but she's also quietly lonely in a way the book handles beautifully. Watching her slowly open up, to Gwydion, to the impossible, to love, is the real story here. She's one of the best female leads I've read in years.

Rebecca Hume

2 reviews8 followers

May 30, 2026 5*

I didn't expect to be moved by the Arthur Pendragon strand but here we are. Artie Drake, wealthy, powerful, slowly becoming someone better, gives a speech near the end about the damage he's personally done through his energy company and it's one of the most uncomfortable and honest things in the book. The moment you realize who he actually is hits quietly and then settles heavily. A man trying to become worthy of who he once was. That's not nothing.

Chris Caleb

14 reviews10 followers

May 30, 2026 5*

Sorcha is the character I wasn't expecting to love most. She's older, a magician, calm in the way of someone who has seen too much to panic easily. The scenes where she and Gwydion communicate silently while Branwen monitors their brain activity are some of the most tender in the book. She sees both of them clearly, their love, their fears, what they're not saying to each other, and her quiet warmth holds a lot of the emotional weight of the second half. A beautiful character.

16 reviews8 followers

May 30, 2026 5 *

Nahida doesn't say much but when she does it matters. She's the one who defends Gwydion when everyone else is piling on him early on. She's the one who notices things. There's a steadiness to her that grounds the whole group. I love when authors do this, give you a character who operates mostly in the background and make you feel exactly how much would collapse without them. Nahida is that character. Small role, large presence.

James Ohagan

2 reviews6 followers

It's the bickering for me. These two spend half the book annoying each other and the other half trying not to want what they obviously want. There's a scene where Branwen comes to his room late at night to tell him about a Cheesyfee breakthrough and neither of them quite knows what's actually happening until it's already happened. No dramatic confession. No big moment. Just two people finally stopping pretending. The slow burn paid off completely and I loved every slow page of it.

Abigail Kleeman

2 reviews5 followers

The thing about Gwydion and Ganna is that she always dies and he never does. He's watched her die and been reborn and die again across centuries. This time he found her as an abandoned baby and raised her himself. She doesn't remember any of it, he has to show her like a film. And yet they feel like real siblings, completely. The argument they have near the end where she says "I really hate you" and he holds her anyway is the scene I keep thinking about most.

James Scott

1 review5 followers

What I love most is that this isn't just Merlin's story. It's Branwen's and Ganna's and Sorcha's and Artie's and the whole global Cheesyfee team, scientists from Lagos, Canada, Sweden, Tokyo, Bulgaria, Ecuador, all of them fighting together for something that matters. The launch event at the Shard where they're all finally in the same room feels genuinely triumphant. And then what happens after. I won't say it. Just read it and have tissues somewhere nearby. You'll need them.

Stacey Lawson

1 review1 follower

There's a throwaway line where Gwydion mentions that Shakespeare wrote the part of Ariel specifically for him. Just says it. Casually. Like it's nothing. I put the book down. Picked it back up. Read the paragraph again. The whole weight of what it means that this man has lived through all of recorded history, not as a legend but as a person, watching friends grow old and die while he keeps going, hit me completely in that moment. Extraordinary book.

Patrick Ivory

1 review1 follower

Abejide from Lagos is one of Branwen's closest collaborators on the Cheesyfee project and the scenes he's in carry a warmth that balances some of the darker material. When Branwen gives her speech at the Shard and shouts out his name to the whole room and he raises his hand and waves with a huge smile, I felt it. This is a book that takes its global cast seriously. The clean energy breakthrough belongs to everyone and the author makes sure you feel that.

Melvin A.

1 review1 follower

There is a mist that rises from the Thames and speaks. It calls Gwydion by his oldest name. It appears at the end of a long walk on the river and says "congratulations, the essential forces of the earth thank you" to Branwen, who promptly decides this is just another thing she needs to scientifically investigate. I love this book. I love that it contains a Thames water spirit who behaves like a dignified elder and Branwen's response is basically to shake its hand and start forming hypotheses.

Dutton Lisa

1 review1 follower

The thing nobody tells you about this book is that Merlin is not confident. At all. He's been called the most powerful sorcerer who ever lived and he walks around convinced he's failed at everything. The first mission, Camelot, he still blames himself. The guilt goes back fifteen centuries and he carries all of it. Watching Branwen and Ganna and Sorcha chip away at that, not with speeches but just by trusting him and being honest with him, is one of the most satisfying arcs in the whole story.

Frances Lamb

1 review1 follower

I'm not going to spoil the ending except to say that the image of a mist-covered barge moving slowly up the Thames while the people who loved him sit in silence inside it is one of the most haunting closing images I've encountered in a long time. And then Branwen turns back to the river and says goodnight to the water. And the water answers. I closed the book and just sat for a while. Some books leave a mark. This is one of them.

Beatrice Williams

1 review1 follower

Elinor doesn't have many scenes but she leaves a hole when she's gone. She's the one who told Branwen Welsh stories as a child, the one who named Gwydion without knowing it, Branwen calls him Gwydion because of a magician from her Gran's old tales and the look on his face when she says it tells you everything. The grief after Elinor's death runs quietly through the final third of the book and the funeral scene, where Merlin pays his own silent tribute to her, genuinely moved me.

Cedric Ellis

1 review1 follower

Something I really appreciated is that the Cheesyfee network isn't just background noise. Rosalie Whiteeagle from Canada, Kalle Ek from Sweden, Tamaki Tamura from Tokyo, Pilar Alvarez from Ecuador, these names are real in the book. Real contributors. When Branwen calls them out one by one during her speech and they each raise their hand and wave, I felt something. The breakthrough belongs to all of them. The author made sure of that and it made the triumph feel genuinely global.

Jane Gill

2 reviews

June 4, 2026

The romance between Branwen and Gwydion is the slowest of slow burns and I savored every page of it. No declarations. No grand gestures. Just two people gradually letting their guard down, sharing tea, going running, watching Shakespeare plays, having arguments and then sitting in silence afterward until someone says sorry. The night it finally shifts between them is so understated that you almost miss it. Almost. Then he quotes Shakespeare quietly in the dark and she kisses him and I had to close the book and breathe for a moment.

Deborah Holmes

1 review

June 5, 2026

The moment Arthur, who has been Artie Drake, wealthy businessman, throughout most of the book, looks at Gwydion in a certain way and something old and deep passes between them is one of the best scenes in the novel. No exposition. No long explanation of who they once were to each other. Just two people whose history goes back to Camelot standing in a modern London office knowing exactly what they are to each other. The author trusts you to feel it without spelling it out and that trust is completely repaid.

Justin Huty

1 review

June 6, 2026

The book doesn’t shy away from the cost of Gwydion’s existence. The episodes where he loses his grip, where the centuries blur and he doesn’t know what year he’s in or what life he’s living, are written with real care. It never feels exploited for drama. It feels like the natural consequence of carrying everything he carries. Branwen’s response to these moments, the way she anchors him back without making him feel fragile, says more about who she is than any amount of dialogue could have managed.

Charlot Benson

8 reviews

June 6, 2026

Genna starts the book as the sharp tongued competent sister who clearly runs everything and ends it as someone who has had to look honestly at the worst parts of herself. The question Merlin puts to her, will your love of luxury and power betray us, is brutal and far and she cant answer it cleanly. Watching her sit with that uncertainty instead of resolving it neatly is some of the best character writing in the book. She is complicated in all the right ways. I could read an entire novel just about her.

PROTECTING CHEESYFEE

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