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Brimstone

Brimstone is a wonderful and scary story from Cherie Priest which combines themes of history, love, and destruction. Alice is a young woman who is a clairvoyant. She travels to the community of Cassadaga in Florida – a real place that was, and remains, a community for spiritualists. Alice has visions of fire and a malevolent force. Meanwhile, Tomás Cordero, a veteran of WWI and resident of Cassadaga, believes that his late wife is leaving messages for him in the ashes of mysterious fires that keep erupting in and near his house.

I love how this book captures time and place, and how it realistically embraces a protagonist and supporting characters of color. It is not a romance, but it deals with themes of different kinds of love and hints at a romance in Alice’s future. The creepy parts are very creepy and everything ties together seamlessly. As the owner of a small, timid dog, I particularly loved the depiction of the dog that Tomás reluctantly finds himself in charge of. Tomás has been grieving his wife so intensely that he can’t open his heart even to his closest friends, but over time he says, “I do not know how I lived so long without a dog.” The dog gives Tomás something to protect, and Tomás gives Alice someone to protect, and both find that the act of caring for another being forces them to grow. It’s an evocative, sweet, empowering story despite the horror the protagonists face.

– Carrie S

A new dark historical fantasy from the supremely gifted * Cherie Priest, author of Maplecroft and Boneshaker.
In the trenches of Europe during the Great War, Tomas Cordero operated a weapon more devastating than any gun: a flame projector that doused the enemy in liquid fire. Having left the battlefield a shattered man, he comes home to find yet more tragedy for in his absence, his wife has died of the flu. Haunted by memories of the woman he loved and the atrocities he perpetrated, Tomas dreams of fire and finds himself setting match to flame when awake….
Alice Dartle is a talented clairvoyant living among others who share her gifts in the community of Cassadaga, Florida. She too dreams of fire, knowing her nightmares are connected to the shell-shocked war veteran and widower. And she believes she can bring peace to him and his wife s spirit.
But the inferno that threatens to consume Tomas and Alice was set ablaze centuries ago by someone whose hatred transcended death itself….