Brimstone is a new standalone novel from Cherie Priest.
Priest is commonly known for the steampunk alternate history that she kicked
off with “Boneshaker”, but she’s also done a paranormal duology centred on
Elizabeth Borden. Brimstone, though, is something else again – a historical
novel with paranormal elements as well as a strong character piece.
Brimstone is set in Florida, after the close of the First
World War. Much of the action is centred on Cassadaga, a small town made famous
by its extensive spiritualist community. It has the feeling of a cheerful place, part
small-town, part mystic camp. There’s a feeling of sunshine, and of community.
Whilst there are always visitors coming and going, drawn by the reputation of
the place, the central core of the town remains the same. There’s a sense
behind it though – as deeper mysteries are alluded to, and dismissed in the
same breath. This is a community of scholars, perhaps, of friendly mediums, of
experimental séances – but it’s a laissez-faire one, where rigour and
enthusiasm are in competition.
That
said, the small town atmosphere and overall sunny disposition make Cassadega a
haven for the dispossessed and the desperate. It’s that dichotomy which comes
alive over the pages, as we’re drawn into the town – whitewashed walls and
friendly neighbours are juxtaposed with mystical understanding, and again with
the fraught responses of those coming into the town looking for Truth with a
capital ‘t’. There’s enough of the world here to make it convincing, broad
strokes laid down, with Prohibition bars and art-deco décor playing alongside
camps by the railroad and cunning architecture
-and the reader can fill in the blanks where required.
There’s some more context provided in flashbacks, particularly
focused on the war. Here the mood is entirely different, somewhere between
sombre and monstrous. Flashes of flame and mud compete with blood and injury, a
vision of hell and fire. Priest does well at getting both of these spaces – the
trenches and the commune – to feel alive, in very distinct ways. The lick of
flame and screaming is drawn in almost
dreamlike fashion, but still feels real on the page; the small town, whose
secrets are if not dark, at least grey, seems a bustling, cheerful place,
familiar, and enjoyable to rediscover for the first time.
The two central characters have different viewpoints,
largely alternated throughout the text. One is a tailor, a survivor of the war,
not entirely unharmed by it. The other wants to be integrated into the
Cassadega community, leaving a defined life in order to make something of
herself, with a talent she’s not entirely sure of. I enjoyed the latter, a
woman not afraid to give her opinion, but also given to throes of doubt, alongside
a defining compassion. Her struggles to understand her talent, conveyed through
a seemingly literary account, are appropriately painful, her investigations
revelatory for both herself and the reader. The other though, the tailor – is
something else. There’s a raw pain at work here. A tragedy, a need for love and
forgiveness in equal measure. Here is a tortured soul, struggling to renew
themselves. Each drop of sweat, of fear, of need, and indeed of love drips off
the page, the desperation, the need and its raw humanity making the character
into a person.
The plot – as ever, I shall try and avoid spoilers. It’s a
slow burner of sorts, as one of our characters begins to learn about herself
and her abilities, and the other tries to discover whether escalating unusual
occurrences are simply accidents, or in some way related to him, or to the
world of the dead. The start is quiet, drawing you into the setting, but the
tension slowly ratchets over the course of the narrative. By the midpoint,
there’s a sense of incipient danger, and of the familiar, friendly places, of
the warmth of the sunshine, becoming something darker and more dangerous – a
place of fuel and fire. Most of the text is about the protagonists, about their
hopes and their fears, and the way they interact with each other as they
investigate the troubling occurrences around them. There’s honest misfortune
here, and love, calamity and laughter, and even a little Truth. It’s an
interesting work of eerie fantasy running side by side with historical reality
– and the shape of the protagonists makes the narrative compelling, the
investment making the tension, the fear of consequences, real. In short, it’s a
story with a slow and steady burn, but one which is worth seeing through.
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