Elaine Bergstrom

A really fascinating book about a young woman's journey through herself and time and her ancestral family. Young Deirdre MacCallum is called to the bedside of her aging great-grandmother and given the keys to her Washington Square home. While incorporating these sudden events into her life, thinking it would only be a short vacation, she instead finds herself walking through a door into the past.

This book is part time travel and part historical fiction as it deals with the real-life Aleister Crowley and one of his Scarlet Women. In the Washington Square home live the family of the great grandmother, Bridget, who fall apart by tragedy until Crowley joins the story. At which point, in this setting, the ritual magick for which he is known becomes a central theme, involving Bridget, Crowley, and the Scarlet Woman who is a close friend and confidante of Bridget.

It is a well-written combination of historical fiction, alternate realities, time travel, and a young woman's self-discovery in the midst of her life upending itself. I enjoyed its depth and venturing into strange and different stories.… (mehr)

I do love those old school vampire novels. It's like going all the way back to Bram Stoker's tale of Dracula.

This book was very dark and savage, but at the same time really interesting. The plot reminded me of a puzzle where lives of few people are described in seemingly random fashion until at some point those lives intersect, and then you understand why the author took time to tell us about those characters.

As this book has Elizabeth Bathori as a main character, the narration starts with one of her ancestors and then proceeds to show us Elizabeth in different times of her life within half a century time period.

Elaine Bergstrom is brilliant at describing the casual cruelty and torture of the era, the helplessness of the poor and immense power over life and death and complete lawlessness of the rich.

Elizabeth Bathori grows up as a sadistic, cold child, and from the moment her life touches Catherine's, a banished vampire from Austra family, it takes turn for worse. The story is very intricate and complex, and at the same time it doesn't allow us to sympathise with the main anti-heroine (thanks, God!), it draws our attention to the lives ruined by Elizabeth's touch.

Vampires of Austra family do not really try to be and feel human, they are what they are, and this alienness feels like such a contrast to modern paranormal novels which attempt to humanise them.

Truly fascinating historical novel for those of you who sometimes want to pick up a classic Gothic novel and get lost in it.… (mehr)