Maplecroft Will Be the Best Damn Cthulhu Novel You’ve Read in Ages
Lizzie Borden’s infamous murders took place just a couple of decades before H.P. Lovecraft first dreamed up the horrors of his greatest invention, the cosmic ocean monster-god Cthulhu. Cherie Priest has taken this historical confluence and turned it into a wild, awesome page-turner called Maplecroft.
Maplecroft: The Borden Dispatches, Book 1 by Cherie Priest
Lizbeth “Lizzie” Andrew Borden wields her axe against Lovecraftian entities in this terrifying and powerful series launch by fan favorite Priest (the Clockwork Century series). Two years after Lizzie infamously slew her mother and stepfather, she and her consumptive, scholarly older sister, Emma, remain in their hometown of Fall River, Mass., in an isolated and modified home called Maplecroft. Lizzie spends countless hours in her basement laboratory, trying to understand what transformed the Bordens into horrifying creatures, while protecting and caring for Emma and conducting a love affair with actress Nance O’Neil. Then Emma, who poses as “Dr. E.A. Jackson” to contribute to the men-only world of science, sends a biological sample to colleague Phillip Zollicoffer at Miskatonic University, with terrible consequences. Readers will be intrigued by the weird monsters and 19th-century science, but the story is really carried by the characters’ emotional dynamics, especially those between the Borden sisters. — Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
With Maplecroft, Cherie Priest delivers her most terrifying vision yet a genuinely scary, deliciously claustrophobic, and dreadfully captivating historical thriller with both heart and cosmic horror. A mesmerizing, absolute must-read! — Brian Keene, bestselling author of The Rising and Ghoul
Cherie Priest is supremely gifted and Maplecroft is a remarkable novel, simultaneously beautiful and grotesque. It is at once a dark historical fantasy with roots buried deep in real-life horror and a supernatural thriller mixing Victorian drama and Lovecraftian myth. You won’t be able to put it down! — Christopher Golden, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Snowblind
Fiddlehead by Cherie Priest
The end of the world as we know it makes for an exciting wrap-up to Priest’s epic alternate steampunk series, which began with Boneshaker. The U.S. Civil War has continued for 20 years because an inventor knocked out Seattle with his Boneshaker engine and stirred up a poisonous gas that is still creating zombies. In Washington, DC, Gideon Bardsley’s new Fiddlehead computational engine has just predicted that the zombies will eventually destroy the human race if the North and South don’t make peace and immediately eradicate the threat. But evil profiteers want to continue the war by spreading the zombie plague and forcing Europe to enter the conflict on the side of the otherwise battle-weakened Confederate States of America. It’s a diabolical plan that just might work.
VERDICT This is a compelling finale to a fantastic series. The good guys are complex and sympathetic; the villains are suitably clever and malign. The action rattles along at breakneck speed, and the reader can’t resist coming along for the wild ride, which includes a climactic battle featuring a wheelchair-bound Abe Lincoln and a temporarily sober Ulysses S. Grant. Highly recommended for all readers of fantasy and steampunk. –Library Journal, Starred Review
Fiddlehead by Cherie Priest
It’s 1879 in this alternate America where the Civil War still drags on, though both sides are utterly spent, Lincoln survived the assassination attempt (he’s confined to a wheelchair, however), and President Ulysses S. Grant has taken to the bottle, having despaired of politics in general and of the loathsome politicians that swarm around him. Young ex-slave and irascible genius Gideon Bardsley has invented a calculating machine, the Fiddlehead, that predicts disaster for both warring sidesbut not by military means. Instead, the zombie plague readers encountered in the previous volume will spread and consume armies and civilians alike. Even worse for Bardsley, somebody’s trying to murder him and destroy or discredit his work. Lincoln’s determined to discover the truth, so he hires former Confederate spy, now Pinkerton agent Maria Boyd to travel south in search of some answers. Grant, desperately trying to retain his sobriety, learns that Secretary of State Desmond Fowler has signed contracts with mega-rich Southern industrialist Katharine Haymes. Fowler claims that Haymes’ plans will end the war in short order, but Grant suspects the opposite is true and that her real aim is to bleed the North dry. These splendidly realized characters working through intriguing situations lead to a thrilling, nail-biting conclusion where Bardsley, Lincoln and Grant find themselves under siege, while Boyd desperately tries to thwart Haymes’ ghastly schemes. A rousing finale, far more convincing than its rather too zombified predecessorone that almost lives up to the extravagant praise this series has received in some quarters. –Kirkus Reviews
