Bog Queen by Anna North
Anna North has written a tale with mysteries from a body found in the bog, believed to be 2,000 years old, and today’s struggle for the environment and development. Agnes is a young American forensic anthropologist who is hired to help identify a body believed to be buried in the bog from 196,1 and instead dates the remains as from the Druidic order of Celtic Europe, over 2,000 years old but preserved in the bog. Readers meet the young Druid as her mother has declared her, as she travels to Camulodunon and returns with gifts. She dies at a Solstice celebration and is buried in the bog. Readers will also know much of the life of Agnes as she spars with environmentalists and developers as she tries to save the bog. The mystery of the distant past and today’s conflict will haunt all who open these pages.
Bog Queen by Anna North, (List Price: $28.99, Bloomsbury Publishing, 9781635579666, October 2025)
Reviewed by Nancy Pierce, Bookmiser in Marietta, Georgia
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I first saw a bog body in the British Museum, and I just thought, How amazing. This is a real person who lived and breathed 1000s of years ago, and I can still see him, and we can learn so much about him and his life, from his body and from studying him. And his people buried him in this place where I think they knew that he would be preserved, and I can imagine them, you know, hoping that maybe we would understand them. One day, I visited the bog where he was found. I really learned so much from that landscape, which today is quite degraded from its former state, but it’s still breathtaking to see, and there are spots of real biodiversity that could come back if protected properly. So I really got obsessed with bogs themselves and with the moss that creates the bogs, and the way it can operate as a colony, not as a single organism. And I really wanted in this book to talk about the non human world. I think that people tend to think that we always drive events on the earth, but there are many other organisms here that have huge impact on us, in our lives, and I really wanted to share that too. 
I’ve always been a writer who puts character first, and when I embarked on writing this novel, I was prepared for some deep character dives. But Buckeye is larger in scope and size than anything I’d ever attempted, and I had no idea of the depths that awaited me… What I learned–what I keep learning, as a writer–is that when you bring a lot of characters together, a story emerges, and it’s not always the story you thought you were going to write.
