kw: book reviews, fantasy, gothic horror, satire
It took me half the book to figure out the locale, Whitby. Meeting "Mr. Alucard" solved that one. Long prior to that, the heavy, thudding hints dropped by Brenda, the heroine of Never the Bride, led me to peg her as the Bride of Frankenstein. In between, human-Martian (à la War of the Worlds) crossbreeds spend a week at her B-&-B by the sea before fleeing pursuit from the Martian-dominated denizens of their remote town.
On the theme of "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it," Paul Magrs has brought together all the archetypes from the Gothic horror films of the 1930s, and dug up a few more of other genres, such as the Thief of Time. Some, including Brenda, Alucard, and a few more "ordinary" humans, are the "good guys", while others range against their efforts to keep an overburdened netherworld from spilling back into this one...or so it seems.
In spite of the clashing genres, it is an enjoyable read. Elsa Lancaster would have loved the rôle.
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