Chapelwood by Cherie Priest
“Most of the reviews of Cherie Priest’s new-ish Maplecroft and its just-released quasi-sequel Chapelwood focus on what her world borrows from H.P. Lovecraft. Those reviews are totally right. There are a lot of tentacles and creeping dread in these two titles. They are loving tributes to Cthulhu and all that dread lord has wrought… While the story is its own force and works a charm, given Priest’s choice to stage the whole book as a series of letters and/or internal monologues by the main actors the Lovecraftian mythos serves as a lovely candy shell around the nougat of cultural commentary Priest is engaging in… Add to that smart subtext a young, female protagonist who is more than capable of rescuing herself, thank you very much, plus an ending that doesn’t fit the expected beats of a climactic ending but is incredibly satisfying and Chapelwood becomes much more than a Lovecraft knock-off. It is wholly and wonderfully itself.” — Locus Magazine
