Ratings2
Average rating4.5
This is a ghost story. It is a story about werewolves, and things that go bump in the night. It is a story of an ill-fated land, the pathless moors of Northern England so well chronicled in Wuthering Heights. And it is the story of a real family whose destiny it is to deal with this darkly glamorous and dangerous world.
When young Emily Brontë helps a wounded man she finds at the foot of an ancient pagan shrine in the remote Yorkshire moors, her life becomes contentiously entwined with his. He is Alcuin Curzon, embittered member of a sect working to eradicate the resurgent plague of lycanthropy in Europe and northern England.
But Emily’s father, curate of the Haworth village church, is responsible for having unwittingly brought a demonic werewolf god to Yorkshire forty years ago—and it is taking possession of Emily’s beloved but foolish and dissolute brother. Curzon must regard Emily’s family as a dire threat.
In spite of being at deadly odds, Emily and Curzon find themselves thrown together in fighting werewolves, confronting pagan gods, even saving each other from the lures of moorland demons. And in a final battle that sweeps from the haunted village of Haworth to a monstrous shrine far out on the moors, the two of them must be reluctant allies against an ancient power that seems likely to take their souls as well as their lives.
Reviews with the most likes.
Quite a departure, but pleasantly so!
I don't have the best of memories for specifics, but the story structure and writing seem different from Powers' usual.
Such a wonderful idea for a story, and told expertly. My only knowledge of the Brontes was from a Monty Python gag about the semaphore version of Wuthering Heights, but now I'm interested in reading their works.
It's always interested seeing what Powers will make of a literary biography, and I enjoyed this spin on the life of the Brontes. Emily takes centre stage, but this is about Bramwell too. Plenty of gothic elements including werewolves, ghosts, curses and a cult. It was atmospheric and I thought it was decently written but didn't particularly have anything that new to say about the family, especially the petulant Bramwell. Emily was far more interestingly written as a character.