Badseedgirl
3/13/2013
This stand alone novel by Cherie Priest is a departure from her previous novels in the Clockwork Century Series. This novel follows two timelines, in One Daniel Boone and a group of workers building a road through the Kentucky Mountians meet and fight a monster. Interspursed in this story is the story of a feuding clan. The Coy's and the Maders. After the death of the patriarch of the family, it is found that he has hidden his will, that will end the feud, in a cave on his property. He has directed that 6 representatives from the two clans go together to find this will.
I was thrilled to find that one of the characters was based in Lily Dale NY. This is an real community in wester NY. I grew up 20 minutes from this community of spiritulist and it's beliefs were well represented by John Coy. I now live in TN not that far from where the novel takes place, so for me it felt close to home.
Although there is not a ton of words dedicated to descriptions of the setting there is enough to create mental pictures scary enough for anyone. The story is told in first person, and jumps from character to character, that was hard for me to follow. I would be a couple lines in before I could figure out who was talking, especially once the characters get into the cave.
As always, Ms. Priests shines in character developement. This is a short novel, but the characters are well deveploed. My only other complaint would be that the novel ends abruptly, almost as if the author got tired and just tacked on the ending. All in all a sucessful novel for this character driven author