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Book Review: The Poe Estate (The Grimm Legacy, Book 3) by Polly Shulman

The Poe Estate (The Grimm Legacy, Book 3) by Polly Shulman

Nancy Paulsen Books, 2015

ISBN-13: 978-0399166143

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook, audio CD

 

This, sadly, is the last book in a trilogy where the real star is not any particular character, but the New-York Circulating Material Repository, a combination library/museum/pocket dimension of fictional objects. The first book, The Grimm Legacy, introduced high school students Elizabeth Rew and Andre Merritt, who were hired to work as pages in the Repository, as they discovered magical objects from fairytales and fantasy. The second book, The Wells Bequest, introduces science geek Leo Novikov and explores fictional objects found in science fiction tales. This third book, The Poe Estate, ventures into the world of Gothic and early horror fiction. It takes place years later, after Elizabeth has become a librarian. She and Andre travel New England looking for haunted objects and houses to store in the repository’s Poe Annex (a detail I loved was that in order to reach the Poe Annex, visitors must first travel through the Lovecraft Corpus, which is just as creepy and atmospherically terrifying as you would expect). However, unlike the first two books, we get a first-person narrator, sixth grader Sukie, whose protective older sister Kitty died from an inherited blood disease from her mother’s side of the family, the Thornes.  Kitty haunts Sukie, still compelled to protect her even after death. Sukie and her parents, suffering financially, move into Thorne Mansion, which is in a sad state of disrepair, with their mother’s very elderly cousin, Hepzibah Thorne, and Sukie soon discovers another ghost haunting the house.  After meeting Elizabeth and Andre at a flea market, Sukie discovers that the house, and members of her family from generations past, appeared in an unfinished Gothic novel. Sukie, Andre, and Elizabeth go on a treasure hunt, passing through the Lovecraft Corpus, visiting the Spectral Library (a fictional library with a ghostly librarian, containing fictional books that exists inside a story: examples of fictional books include the Necronomicon and The King in Yellow, both of which are better handled by a ghost than a human being), and traveling through the Poe Annex, which contains not just haunted houses, but haunted ships, haunted trains, and haunted islands. There are enough Easter eggs in this book to give any fan of Gothic and early horror fiction plenty to delight in, and the metanarrative is kind of fascinating, although it’s also somewhat confusing.

I personally am absolutely delighted to see the names of some of these lesser-known stories (such as “Afterward” by Edith Wharton and “The Wind in the Rose-Bush” by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman) and authors appear in a middle grade novel, and I love the Repository and its collections. However, Sukie’s story as a girl dealing with grief over the death of her sister, financial difficulties at home, and bullying at school, whose elderly cousin is being pursued by unscrupulous developers, gets shafted by the author’s need to incorporate the Repository into the narrative. Jonathan Rigby, the villain from previous books, doesn’t get much space in the story, and the conflicts and relationships don’t get the attention they deserve. Sukie’s story is definitely a middle-grade story, but its intersection with the Repository storyline mostly derails it in favor of dropping names that might not be familiar even to many adults. Shulman could get away with this in The Grimm Legacy, because most kids have a basic familiarity with fairytales, but I don’t think it works here.

If you are an adult who loves the idea of  fantastic libraries or getting to step into favorite stories (visiting the House of Usher, flying on a broom from Young Goodman Brown, tracking down Captain Kidd’s treasure) then this is a really fun book.  Unfortunately, I think a lot of it will go over the target audience’s head. Polly Shulman does provide a list of authors and titles mentioned in the text, and she got me interested enough in Hawthorne to look some of his stories up (The Scarlet Letter successfully turned me off to Hawthorne in high school), but I have trouble seeing kids in elementary or early middle school  actively seeking these stories out on their own. This isn’t great writing, but it’s a lovely tribute with an enjoyable concept,  one of those books that is best shared between an adult who loves the genre and the kids in their lives.

 

Posted on January 14, 2020 by , Reply

Book Review: Violet by Scott Thomas

Violet by Scott Thomas

Inkshares Press, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-947848-36-8

Available: Paperback, Kindle, audiobook

 

Scott Thomas’s sophomore novel, Violet, came with a mound of high expectations attached to it.  His debut novel, Kill Creek, was one of the best horror novels of 2017.   Critics everywhere praised it, and even had some proclaiming Thomas as the possible heir to the Throne of King.  Needless to say, his second novel had a lot to live up to.  Unfortunately, the material does not meet the expectations, and judgment on whether he is the heir apparent will have to wait another book or two.  Violet showcases the author’s excellent descriptive writing, but the book is dragged down by its slow pace and lack of an exciting finish.

 

Kris Barlow and her eight year old daughter, Sadie, are retreating to the lake house that Kris inherited from her parents.  The goal is recovery, as her husband Jonah just died in a car accident.  Worth noting: Kris didn’t like him that much anyhow.  The setting seems perfect for a ride of suspense: the town is small, and the lake was mysteriously formed years ago when construction workers dug into a hidden chasm, releasing enough water to make a lake suddenly appear and flood half the town.  The house is in disrepair, as everyone that rented it left after a few days out of fear, and even the realtor won’t go near the place.  While there, odd happenings such as handprints all over the inside windows start to occur.  While settling into small town life, Kris learns of the mysterious disappearances of young girls in the area.  Some of the bodies were recovered, some not.  The ghostly occurrences increase, people drop mysterious warnings, and Kris soon learns that her daughter may be a target of the town’s evil forces.

 

As noted, Thomas is an excellent writer, with a real flair for descriptive narration.  He paints pictures with words so well you can see the whole book running on the movie screen in your mind.  The dialogue is also quite good, but it’s the narration where Thomas really shines.  He skates right up close to the edge of excess with his description, but he never crosses the line.  As a result, the story leaps right off the page at you.  The problem is, the story itself simply isn’t that compelling.  This book is an EXTREMELY slow burn, and it takes until around 300 pages before the story starts to move a little bit.  Even when it does, it doesn’t move much.  A thrilling climax might have been enough to justify the previous 400 pages, but even that gets denied.  In all likelihood, the end will leave the reader with more questions than answers.  It’s really a shame, because the setting and backstory seemed perfect for Thomas to apply his considerable skill at suspense writing.  All the elements are there: ghostly figures, mysterious neighbors, townies who seem to be hiding something, strange occurrences with animals, the list goes on.  Despite all of the available parts, for some reason, Thomas simply can’t get this one off the ground.  The best that can be said is, the talent is there, and let’s hope for better next time.

Contains: mild violence, mild profanity.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

 

 

 

 

Posted on December 22, 2019 by , Reply

Musings: 2020 Is Nearly Here! The Classics Are Coming!

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It’s been a big year for looking back, with the establishment of the Paperbacks from Hell imprint, Looking forward to 2020, it appears that it will be a big year for looking even further back.  The publication of several books of ghost and Gothic tales in 2019 looks like it was the beginnings of a return to the classics of the genre. 2020 will bring the first volume of HWA’s Haunted Library series that will be published in conjunction with Poisoned Pen Press, The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. In addition, Crystal Lake has just announced that they’ll be publishing Crystal Classics, dark tales from the late 19th and early 20th century,  with occasional titles that “challenge” a classic title, and the covers look lovely. Their December newsletter says the first three of these are out in paperback and will also be available as ebooks: they are The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen, with an introduction by William Meikle;  Dagon Rising, a “challenge” to Lovecraft by William Meikle; and The Willows by Algernon Blackwood, with an introduction by Jasper Bark. I’ve been watching over the past several years now as some of the older or lesser-known writers are starting to be introduced to readers who may never have encountered them before, and I think we’ll continue to see this appreciation of writers from earlier times. Given the publication of books like Monster, She Wrote this year, which set a focus on lesser-known women writers (or women writers whose supernatural work was lesser-known) I think we can be sure that there will be more to uncover and appreciate! Of course, time, and literature, and our fears, move on forward, and I think we’ll see more diversity among contemporary writers in 2020 as well, if what I’m already seeing is any indication. It’s an exciting time to be a writer, publisher, librarian, researcher, and reader, and I can’t wait to see what directions the genre goes in next.

 

Posted on December 22, 2019 by , Reply
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