Cherie Priest For and Twenty Blackbirds

For and Twenty Blackbirds

Cherie Priest

Tor, Oct 2005, $13.95, 288 pp.

ISBN: 0765313081

Eden Moore lives on Signal Mountain overlooking Chattanooga raised by her maternal family especially Aunt Louise since her mom died in childbirth. She sees ghosts especially three spirits who are always there for her. Eden knows the trio is her mom and her aunts. These deceased sisters struggle to keep the child safe initially from a God fearing killer who wants her dead before she can follow the path of her evil wicked great-grandfather; a necromancer and mage who cursed the living and enlivened the dead.

The threesome knows that something even more dangerous is coming for Louise and then Eden. They try to reach out to Eden to warn her, but she fails to fully comprehend what her mom and aunts want her to know. Eden realizes she must confront something very evil without the aid of her beloved Aunt Louise or Uncle Dave. Thus she slips away heading to a family mansion and other Antebellum ruins in Georgia seeking what she does not know only that she must find this unknown to save what is left of her family.

Besides making believers out of readers that ghosts do exist, the key to this enchanting horror tale is that the readers never know what to expect next yet when that subsequent event happens it seems very obvious. The cast is terrific especially the preadolescent heroine who holds the thriller together. Contrasting the mortal heroine and otherworldly guardians to the assassin and the malevolence add depth to a must read journey of adventure. Readers will enjoy travelling into a world filled with nineteenth century supernatural curses trying to destroy twenty-first century offspring.

Harriet Klausner