Synopsis
Mrs. Mina Braithwaite has never quite fit into Mydalla’s polite society. Her features are so different from the other noblewomen, more like the city’s foreign workers, and she chafes at all the rules. Then there’s the furious entity that has followed her for years, crawling from shadows to hurt her and staining every memory with fear. Desperate for help, Mina crashes a private gathering to see the infamous occultist Alexandre DuMort in action. She doesn’t expect the pull of attraction towards the man, nor his invitation to join him in his work.
But DuMort has enemies, dangerous ones, and they dog his steps as closely as Mina’s entity does hers. Mina must choose between her old life, and the angry spirit that stalks her, or follow the famed occultist down a new path, where even worse things might haunt her.
Review
It’s hard to get attached to characters quickly when you’re thrown right into their conflict rather than get to know them a bit before the drama first. This novella did start its drama quite intriguingly though so I was happy to see where it would lead.
In the limited time a novella has, world building needs to be very precise too and this DuMort did really well right from the start. With just a few words here and there, I immediately got a feel for the kind of environment this story was set in, both physically and as a society. This was really well done throughout the whole story.
Where it struggled a bit, in my opinion, was the emotional development. The fear and anxiety I could feel through the pages, but the infatuation the MC had for one character and the grief she felt for her relationship with another wasn’t as well portrayed. She talked about it but I didn’t quite feel it in her words as I did those other emotions that were so prevalent throughout.
This was a really quick read and I quite enjoyed the plot. I’m not well-versed in horror tropes yet, so I didn’t expect the ending at all. That was fun. I saw that the author is working on a novel right now and I’m curious to hear more about it.
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