November 15, 2018
This Southern gothic tale follows a bedraggled carnival as it limps through the Deep South.It's 1922, and Pontilliar's Spectacular Star Light Miraculum has been "on its last legs for the past fifteen years." The carnival has a wonderfully odd collection of freaks for public amazement, including a man with a third leg and a geek who bites the heads off chickens. Trouble begins when the geek inexplicably hangs himself--you'd think a geek would have everything to live for--and a handsome, well-dressed stranger named Daniel presents himself to Pontilliar as the "new glomming geek." Protagonist Ruby Chole is Pontilliar's daughter, a sympathetic character who is tattooed from head to toe and plays the snake charmer, Esmeralda the Enchantress. Ruby senses something sinister about Daniel even before the second terrible incident: Daniel challenges gambling addict Tom Given to a dice game of Dead Man All In and wins Tom's beautiful girlfriend, January, who seems to have no say in the matter. Tom then horrifies his carnival colleagues by falling to his death from a Ferris wheel. Among the carnival workers, "There were whispers of madness. And of murderers." Ruby suspects that Daniel has killed both men--or caused them to die. But no one is prepared for the further havoc that befalls the carnival. Daniel reveals himself to the reader as being other than human--as a god, in fact. The "hell-sent geek" has lived as a trickster for countless centuries and is delighted whenever he can cause disasters. In the end, Ruby must find a way to deal with him--she can't kill him, so she had better come up with a trick of her own. This is a tale brimming with imagination and rich in melancholy as it pits the natural against the supernatural and touches on what it means to be human.Great fare for fans of gothic fiction or simply good storytelling.
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December 1, 2018
Post presents a novel with similar supernatural elements as Erin Morgenstern's modern classic The Night Circus, featuring plenty of money men and the seductively strange. But where Morgenstern memorably paints a world of beautiful magic and tragic love, Post delves into the ugliness of the struggle to achieve self-determination within it. She uses a third-person omniscient voice to offer many perspectives on lice-ridden, moonshine-soaked carnie life but ultimately focuses on protagonist Ruby Chole, tattooed lady and enchantress of serpents, vs. antagonist Daniel Revont, a singular geek with bespoke suits and a preternatural power of persuasion. As Ruby learns more of her own powers and Daniel employs his for casual, destructive cruelty, the path to their showdown intertwines with a mutual realization that they understand each other better than anyone else ever could. VERDICT Night Circus fans will inevitably find this a cousin of their favorite, but readers of Katharine Dunn's Geek Love or Neil Gaiman's American Gods are more likely to enjoy it.--Nicole Steeves, Fox River Valley P.L. Dist., IL
Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
December 1, 2018
A miraculum, says the dictionary, is "a miracle; a divine act." There's nothing heavenly, however, about a traveling carnival called Pontilliar's Spectacular Star Light Miraculum. It's 1922, summer in the sweaty Southwest, and, despite its inflated name, the Miraculum may be the seediest carnival ever. As the narrative begins, things are about to go haywire. The show's geek, the fellow who bites the heads off live chickens, hangs himself for reasons that aren't clear to him: "He only knew that he must." An applicant for the job suddenly appears?literally out of nowhere?and readers are cued right away that something is off. Tattooed Ruby, the carnival's snake charmer and daughter of the owner, senses trouble, and the clash between her and the new geek, far too well dressed for his job, is the eventual point of the novel. It's a long time coming, though, but readers will content themselves with Post's rich, atmospheric prose and displays of dark magic while they wait. Ruby has strange powers of her own, and the ending, with animal howls of rage, is all the more effective for the suddenly understated prose.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)