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The House of Dead Maids
by Clare B. Dunkle

Pub. Date: September 2010
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Format: Hardback, 160pp
Age Range: Young Adult
Series: None
ISBN-13: 9780805091168

Synopsis from Barnes & Noble

Young Tabby Aykroyd has been brought to the dusty mansion of Seldom House to be nursemaid to a foundling boy. He is a savage little creature, but the Yorkshire moors harbor far worse, as Tabby soon discovers. Why do scores of dead maids and masters haunt Seldom House with a jealous devotion that extends beyond the grave?

As Tabby struggles to escape the evil forces rising out of the land, she watches her young charge choose a different path. Long before he reaches the old farmhouse of Wuthering Heights, the boy who will become Heathcliff has doomed himself and any who try to befriend him.

Jennifer's Review of The House of Dead Maids

(This review contains spoilers.)

It would have been wonderful to have read, reviewed, and rated Clare Dunkle’s little book minus its blurb and final chapter. I would have bestowed five stars upon it without hesitation. From the front cover to the inner illustrations to the penultimate chapter, The House of Dead Maids is an excellent ghost story. Why only three stars then? I’ll get to that. But first, the art.

Few horror novels, or novellas, as this is, are blessed with such an evocative cover – with her black, empty eye sockets, the dead maid’s face, set amongst stark, bare tree branches with an otherworldly light glowing in the background, creates a forbidding atmosphere that augurs suspense, mystery, and menacing ghosts. Add to that the creepy illustrations that head each chapter and the artwork earns five big stars. (Give credit for the illustrations to Patrick Arrasmith. Among other things, he is responsible for the equally outstanding, and spooky, art of The Last Apprentice series.)

The promise of the cover is, for the first eleven chapters, fulfilled and then some. The story contains numerous beautifully written, chilling passages that are a pleasure to read:

The dead hold no terrors for me. I have watched by the beds of those who have passed on, comforted by their sorrowless repose. But this little maid was a ghastly thing, all the more horrible because she stood before me. It wasn’t the pallid hue of her grimy face that shocked me, or her little gray hands and feet. It was the holes where her eyes should have been, great round sockets of shadow.

As a result of her consistently able writing, Dunkle’s characters and setting come to life in all their unsettling glory. Aside from Tabby, the young nursemaid and our heroine, no one creates sympathy in the reader. But this is as it should be, for Tabby is an innocent thrown in among wolves. The nameless six year old boy who becomes Tabby’s charge (“Himself”, she dubs him, though he prefers, and revels in, “heathen git”) is a tyrant and a cruel little monster. When we find out that he and Tabby are doomed to die, the only reason we hope that Tabby will be able to rescue Himself is because we know she won’t leave without him. Otherwise, we would be as happy to see him die as he would be. (Himself longs to come back as a ghost and terrorize the household where he and Tabby are held prisoner.) The bulk of the cast consists of cold, amoral individuals – not unlike the horde of ghosts that haunt the house. Together, the living and the dead create a sinister environment where, if evil rests, it’s only to lie down in bed with you. (Literally, as Tabby finds out.)

Other reviewers have summarized the plot. I will only say that the resolution arrives naturally and is suspenseful and exciting. And that it is with much satisfaction that we read this, the perfect closing line:

Thus we came safe out of that accursed country, with not a footprint left behind to tell of our passing, nor a scent for the bloodhound to catch.

As if they were ghosts, the admiring reader thinks.

But alas! Despite how neatly that sentence concludes the story, the book refuses to end. Instead, it staggers on through an entirely unnecessary chapter twelve – a contrived piece of work with little of the atmosphere of the preceding chapters, which spoils the novella by cheapening all that comes before it. And now I must refer to that other part of the book I had wished gone – the blurb on the back cover. There we are told that The House of Dead Maids is a prequel to Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, and that “the child who will become Heathcliff is already a savage little creature”, etc. But this story – and by that I mean the eleven chapter tale of Tabby and Himself – is most assuredly not a prequel to Wuthering Heights. (Watching Heathcliff being tugged through an adventure at six years old hardly constitutes a prequel. The intent, apparently, is that this story lays the groundwork for the brooding adult Heathcliff – but one might consider boyhood and adolescence to be of equal or greater importance to his development, especially as later on we are led to believe that those years will be normal and pleasant ones.)

What makes the book a prequel is that infernal chapter twelve, in which the reader is bombarded with well over a decade’s worth of information about Tabby’s later life: She makes a friend and together they open a knitting school; she has two more encounters with ghosts; she survives a serious illness; her friend marries and she moves in with the couple; finally, she becomes a maid for the Brontë family and tells the children all manner of eerie stories. Also on this excursion into biography, we find out that Himself was picked up on the street by a kindly, respectable stranger who, when he asks the “little scoundrel” his name, mistakes his reply, “heathen git”, for “Heathcliff”. (Thanks to the blabbing blurb, the reader sees that coming from the first time “heathen git” is used in the story.) As Heathcliff is coincidentally the name of the stranger’s dead son, he immediately announces that he will take the rude, unkempt, thieving lad home to live with him (as his son, it is implied) at Wuthering Heights.

A writer needs to know where to end his/her book. It seems basic and obvious, but it is as much a skill as knowing where a story should begin. In her epilogue, Dunkle says she was inspired to write Dead Maids by Wuthering Heights and the real life Tabby. But in that final chapter, she forces her book to be something it doesn’t want or have to be, thereby dragging it down. Now, instead of a smile appearing on the reader’s face as she closes the book, there’s a grimace.

A ghost story is simply a type of fairy tale. And like a fairy tale, it occupies a small, confined world from which the reader should be released as soon as the plot has been resolved. We don’t need to see what happens after “happily ever after” – that broadens the world and spreads thin the spell the story has cast upon us, ruining the moment, as it were. Give the boy a name, reduce the number of times he’s called a “heathen git”, and end the book at chapter eleven. The House of Dead Maids would then stand on its own as a minor classic in the field of young adult horror. As it is, it will be forever huddling, ghost-like, in the shadows of Wuthering Heights. Although, as a huge fan of that novel, perhaps that is exactly what Dunkle intended. It would explain why that unfortunate final chapter was tacked on to an otherwise enjoyable and memorable ghost story.

(Two minor comments:

1. On several occasions, Tabby uses the word “wisht” – an adjective which is British dialectal for “dismal” or “eerie” – to tell Himself to be quiet. Doubtless, the author meant to write the interjection “whist” (or “whisht”), meaning “hush”. But mine being an ARC, hopefully such mistakes were caught and corrected.

2. I can’t let this review go by without quoting the second sentence from the book’s Dedication: “I love you, Jennifer.” Sure, the comment’s not meant for me, but reading that line after having just turned over the unnerving cover with those empty sockets staring at me curled my toes!)

(Review originally published October 22, 2010, on GoodReads.com.)

Research, Research, Research!

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Passion Play
by Beth Bernobich

Pub. Date: October 2010
Publisher: Tor Books
Format: Paperback, 367pp
Age Range: Adult
Series: Erythandra #1
ISBN-13: 9780765322173

Synopsis from Barnes & Noble

Ilse Zhalina is the daughter of one of Melnek's more prominent merchants. She has lived most of her life surrounded by the trappings of wealth and privilege.  Many would consider hers a happy lot. But there are dark secrets, especially in the best of families. Ilse has learned that for a young woman of her beauty and social station, to be passive and silent is the best way to survive.

When Ilse finally meets the older man she is to marry, she realizes he is far crueler and more deadly than her father could ever be. Ilse chooses to run. This choice will change her life forever. And it will lead her to Raul Kosenmark, master of one of the land's most notorious pleasure houses...and who is, as Ilse discovers, a puppetmaster of a different sort altogether. Ilse discovers a world where every pleasure has a price and there are levels of magic and intrigue she once thought unimaginable. She also finds the other half of her heart.

Jennifer's Review of Passion Play

(This review contains spoilers.)

The most important thing about telling a lie is to make certain its every detail is believable. If, under scrutiny, even a fragment of it breaks down, then the entire lie is exposed. Now, there is no 'lie' bigger than a work of fiction, especially a fantasy novel. Not only have the characters never existed, but their world does not, and has never, existed. But through the magic of suspended disbelief, we readily accept the validity of a novel's fictional world, and view as real and meaningful its characters and their actions, as long as every detail is believable.

Passion Play is two stories in one: the first is very good, the second is average. Story number one features a swiftly moving, well-written, enthralling plot, with a 15 year old girl as the winning protagonist for whom we root and with whom we suffer. So good were these first 100 pages that I had to force myself to put the book down. Unfortunately, after story number two began, I had to force myself to pick the book up.

What destroys Passion Play, where the 'lie' begins to break down, is the male lead, Lord Raul Kosenmark. When we first meet him, he is described as having a very high, feminine voice. Shortly after, we find out that, in order to prove his loyalty so that he might serve on the king's Inner Council, he underwent castration. As an adult. Five minutes of research would have informed the author that castration after puberty does not change the male voice. And since his condition, this error, is brought to the attention of the reader every chapter or two, there is no way to forget that what we are reading is not real.

What's unfortunate is that it is totally unnecessary to the plot. Remove every instance of Raul's eunuchism from the story, and nothing is lost. Return it, and nothing is gained. (In a world of magic, an oath of fidelity could have been enforced magically: One willingly accepts into one's body an infusion of magic that, like a bomb, may be detonated by the king at the first sign of treason.) Furthermore, we learn that Raul’s condition may be reversed through magic, which nullifies the value of that type of oath.

This is not, however, the book's only breakdown. In the last 200+ pages, Ilse, our heroine -- who is 16 now -- becomes the chief confidant and prime counselor to Lord Kosenmark (who is in a life or death struggle to prevent a war and save the kingdom). None of the other, older members of Raul’s inner circle seem to think her youth and inexperience in affairs of state is a problem. Yet this is the same girl who, but days before, was sorely distressed over the teasing and pranks of the mean girls who worked with her in Raul’s kitchen. But perhaps those other characters may be forgiven because, once out of the kitchen, Ilse thinks and behaves like a 25 or 30 year old woman. Since the author seldom mentions her age, the reader must constantly remind herself that Ilse is still a teenager.

After the excitement of the early chapters, the plot in the latter chapters drags to a halt. The most exciting thing that happens is opening the mail and attending the staff meeting afterward. Literally. And daily. Ilse is Raul's secretary (and later, his lover), so she examines all of his correspondence, much of which concerns the intrigues revolving around the “shadow court” he has established. Then she and Raul, and whoever else may be in-house that day, sit around and discuss the content of the letters. Except for one, hard-to-believe battle (Ilse, barely trained in self-defense, defeats two well-armed professional soldiers), the bulk of the action -- battles, murders, the machinations of Khandarr, the evil magician -- takes place off-stage, the reader learning about these things through letters. It is very hard to be concerned about threats to characters you've never met, or to fear a faceless foe. (Khandarr appears once, briefly and ineffectually, when he magically crashes a meeting, looks around ominously – in actuality, checking attendance – and then is shooed away.)

Bernobich's conversations flow easily and naturally, and, in the first part of the book anyway, the characters, even the minor ones, come to life. Her depictions of Ilse's rape and later love-making are tasteful, without undue details or sensationalism. For the most part, her prose is lively and free of cliches, though she frequently exhibits a first novelist's tendency towards verbosity: Raul “vented a sigh” (for 'sighed'); during sword exercises he “made a noncommittal noise” ('grunted'); at dinner, he “made a noise in his throat” (‘cleared his throat’); and early on, we come across the bane of poorly written juvenile fiction (or the pride of melodramatic parody) when Ilse sheds “hot tears”. These are common mistakes of a first-time novelist, and too often, sins of the genre, but the editors should not have allowed them to reach press.

The author mentions in her acknowledgments that it took her “many years to write” the book, that she “fumbled toward the story” she wanted to tell, and that one person advised her where to start, and another where to end, the novel. Passion Play is dedicated to the redoubtable Sherwood Smith who, Bernobich writes, read “draft after draft, giving me feedback on prose and plot and characters.” Toss in the editors she credits with supposedly saving her book from “all kinds of inconsistencies and infelicities”, and it’s clear that many share the blame for its problems.

At the end, when Ilse and Raul agree to separate for safety's sake (a questionable decision that feels contrived), I felt no sorrow, only joy that, for a few pages at least, I could again spend time alone with Ilse. If the sequel concerned only her, I would read it, although given that she and Raul will be miles apart, I fear the plot will once more involve opening endless amounts of mail.

(Review originally published October 22, 2010, on GoodReads.com.)