By: Cherie Priest Average Rating: Binding: Kindle Edition Format: Kindle Book Label: Tor Books Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 288 Publication Date: March 11, 2008 Release Date: March 11, 2008
Product Description: The classic Southern gothic gets an edgy modern makeover in Priest's debut novel about a young woman's investigation into the truth of her origins. What Eden Moore digs up in the roots of her diseased family tree takes her across the South, from the ruins of the Pine Breeze sanitarium in Tennessee to a corpse-filled swamp in Florida, and back in time to the Civil War, when the taint in her family bloodline sets in motion events building only now to a supernatural crescendo. Priest adds little new to the gothic canon, but makes neo-goth chick Eden spunky enough to deal with a variety of clich? menaces?a scheming family matriarch, a brooding Poe-esque mansion and a genealogy greatly confused with inbreeding?that would have sent the genre's traditional wilting violets into hysterics. Eden is a heroine for the aging Buffy crowd, and her adventures will play best to postadolescent horror fans.
A wondeful read Do you like a book tha pulls you in in the first 10 pages? this will be one of them. greatghost story and mystery.
Awesome read ! I'm discovering a lot of new authors with my new Kindle. I've had it only 2 weeks and already read like 10 new books. This book was great. It drew me into the story right away, I couldn't put it down.
Intriguing Tale with a Few Loose Ends I was on the fence between giving this 3 stars or 4 and went for the 4. This was a great read, I like stories with geneaological backgrounds. It reminded me a bit of Monsters of Templeton....what disappointed me in the end was (at least for me), the author failed to tie it all together. I would have enjoyed one of the characters doing a quick explainer of how everything tied together in the end. Part of it may have been that I was reading the Kindle edition, and therefore have a hard time searching back to look up references to history / kinship,I had the same problem reading Monsters of Templeton. I'm still a little fuzzy on how the family relationships in this novel shook out. Even a little family tree at the end of the book would have helped me. Overall, though, this book grabbed me and kept me intrigued to the last pages.
So many twists and turns...keeps you from putting it down When I first started reading this book, I had mixed feelings. I wasn't sure where this story was going or if I even wanted to finish it. But I am really glad that it became so, that I didn't want to put it down. This is one southern gothic-horror/mystery that I will always remember, that is for sure.
The story starts out by introducing Eden Moore, a little girl who sees ghosts. Eden is haunted by the images in her mind and as a small child she doesn't understand exactly what they mean. She starts to draw what she sees, which is turned over the the school officials. During a meeting with this official...a simple hand gesture is the start of a whirlwind of events for Eden. The sudden hand motions trigger something in her mind, an image from her dreams, and she acts out violently toward him. That is where the story starts to become more clear for me. She sees these ghosts and hears them speak as well. She is unable to get answers from her Aunt as to who these ghosts are...three women. The plot thickens. It becomes so fast paced and the images become more pronounced. A cousin, who has tried to repeatedly murder Eden, becomes somewhat of a physco character. Appearing and reappearing. You don't know when he will appear again or what else he will try to do to Eden. It fills the reader with guessing. Just when you think you know where it is heading, it takes a whole different turn. Eden is a strong willed, determined young woman who doesn't quit turning up stones of her family history, of a mother she never knew, a past that she has been warned will only cause her more heartache. A past that could very well be the end to Eden. And her family...but Eden doesn't know that this could be the end for her or her family. Not until the very...end! She discovers so much more than she ever thought possible. Her childhood dreams become reality. The three ghosts become reality...the reality of who they really are. The "magic" of the past almost destroys the entire family of Eden and their history came close to be rewritten into one horrible, unthinkable furture....but Eden doesn't give up and the ending will surprise you as it did me....
I thought with each page I could figure out Edens past and the secrets, but each time I was wrong. But as the end of the story approached, I got the feeling that there should have been just a tad more to it. I, like other readers, feel that the end of the book was rushed. The novel is very descriptive. The horror of it all was great...but I just felt that the end didn't quite do justice to the novel like it deserved. However,it is incredible the way Cherie Priest is able to write with such imagery.
Creepy Horror "Four and Twenty Blackbirds" is more creepy than horrifying, but it's a constant creeping dread, even when you figure out much of what's going on before the protagonist does. An odd decision by one of the characters later on in the book saps some of the tension out as it doesn't seem to be justified by anything other than narrative necessity, but the climax is still gripping.
Cherie Priest's horror novel follows the seemingly haunted Eden, as she grows up in an adopted family, in atmosphere suffused with family secrets. Secrets tied to why a man attempted to kill her when she was still a child, and who exactly the ghosts haunting her - or protecting her - are. Priest keeps up the tension surrounding the central mystery, but the physical threat to Eden is never entirely convincing until it gets ratcheted up at the end; and the incompetence of the police is odd. It's still a good horror novel, with blood and family center stage.
Anything Goes Trivia
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