This is one of the better examples of horror/supernatural historical fiction that I have come across. Strong, developed characters with a main character that you will deeply care and root for. Jacqueline is young Creole slave living on a plantation in Louisiana. This is her story, Her abuse and adversity. Her pain.

This book takes the best parts of Alex Haley, Alice Walker, Anne Rice and Katherine Dunn and combines them into a slick engaging narrative. I will say though, that with the combination of themes and influences I was left wanting more in a couple of places. The first example of that would be the book starts off as an extremely dark and miserable yet engaging tale of slavery, abuse, incest and rape. As much as I wanted Jacqueline to get out of that situation, that part of the story had me rapt. When we left the plantation I was happy that Jacqueline's course had changed, but as a reader ( this is hard to say, because I didn't want more plantation misery for our MC ) I wanted more of this part of the story line. Our quest eventually sets us on a path to freedom. Jacqueline's freedom, and along the way we meet a magical "traveling circus of supernatural freaks" ( from the back of the book ). This for me was where the comparison to Dunn's Geek Love comes in. I really enjoyed these scenes, these characters. The mask maker. I wanted more of this as well. So yeah, I wanted more. The author pulled me in and locked my attention. She gave me an intertwining story with themes of slavery and the deep south, plantation life as well as antebellum New Orleans, the underground railroad, witchcraft, voodoo, vampires, shape-shifters, the traveling circus, and a hell of a lot more.

There are times that the wealth of experiences that Jacqueline has to go through makes you forget how young she really is. She is just a child really, but this book does a great job of relaying how fast children of hard times and hard places have to grow up.

Jacqueline can read and has a great love of books. She had to hide that due to an educated slave being "dangerous" in the white folk's eyes. Those bits were extremely sad, but there is a scene where she gets a bit of rest, a bit of time with some books, that part was kind of beautiful.

Ultimately the theme that jumped off the page at me was the idea of "true villains" and "deep-seeded evil". This books is flowing with vampires and creatures and conjurers. None of that was as frightening as the white slave owners. None of that was as horrific as the slave catchers and the suffering that they inflicted.

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Review by Well Read Beard

Twitter: @WellReadBeard

 I was sent this book for review by the author.