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scparris's review
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
4.5
Colin Harker transcends with the lengthy debut novel, A Feast of the Innocents. Borrowing from inspirations, Mary Shelley and Thomas Ligotti, Harker crafts a deliciously gothic novel that is brought to life by a cast of peculiar, well-formed characters, all with their own motives and schemes.
It is the Priory where these characters encounter not only each other but dark schemes, that, when it came down to it, were truly dark. I was pleasantly surprised when one character’s machinations were revealed and dark magic made its unexpected appearance. There are few twists and turns like that in the book, but once it gets going it doesn’t let up and the slower pace of the first half was quickly forgotten.
Harker is adept at interjecting comedy/lighthearted moments after particularly tense moments which break up the tension nicely and provide a smile or laugh when needed. Her writing is engaging once one gets used to the historical way both the story is told and written: her prose bounces and flutters with colorful adverbs and there is a lot of time spent on people’s appearances--their visages changing form (figuratively) in candlelight, or their expressions contorting monstrously revealing the truth of their motives.
Harker is adept at interjecting comedy/lighthearted moments after particularly tense moments which break up the tension nicely and provide a smile or laugh when needed. Her writing is engaging once one gets used to the historical way both the story is told and written: her prose bounces and flutters with colorful adverbs and there is a lot of time spent on people’s appearances--their visages changing form (figuratively) in candlelight, or their expressions contorting monstrously revealing the truth of their motives.
A Feast of the Innocents may have been released last year, but it is as timeless as any gothic novel made years ago. Its horrors are bound within its pages, and like the Priory in which its set, one need only enter the world she’s created to explore its ceaseless and terrifying secrets.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood and Murder
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