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| A Sorcerer Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher |
A Sorceress Comes to Call is a gothic horror or fairytale complete with ghosts and headless horses. It takes place in a country manor, but the country and time are a bit vague. It mostly resembles early Victorian England, except everyone is Catholic, and it constantly refers to old world across the sea, so maybe New England with aristocrats, country squires and general Englishness. Or maybe it’s an imaginary place of fairytales.
Cordelia is fourteen and deathly afraid of her mother. Evangeline is a sorceress with the power of taking over Cordelia’s body, making her a puppet her mother operates, a horror she has to often endure. Her mother uses it mostly as a punishment, but Cordelia can never be sure what triggers the punishment. She’s timid, barely daring to breathe wrong, has no friends, and little understanding of how the world works. And she’s not allowed to have any secrets from her mother, and no closed doors between them. She can only confide in her mother’s horse, Falada.
Cordelia’s world is turned upside down, when her mother announces she’s going to marry a rich squire who has no idea what’s awaiting him, and whisks them off to his country manor. Cordelia must marry well too, so she has to pretend she’s seventeen. She can barely handle being fourteen and outside her village, let alone living in a large manor with servants who are nice to her. But the most difficult thing for her to handle is the freedom of knowing there are locked doors between her and her mother. It triggers fear episodes in her.
Hester is 51 and a spinster, because a decade ago she rejected the man she loves for his own good. But she’s organised her life the way she likes with her brother, the squire, even if her bad knee troubles her. And then everything is ruined by the arrival of Evangeline. Hester knows even before she shows up that doom is on its way, and is determined to stop it at any cost.
Evangeline sets out to seduce the squire. She can’t use magic, because the wedding rites will dissolve it. Hester is equally determined to stop it, so she fills the house with friends, one of whom is the squire’s former mistress. A bad move. Because Evangeline is not above murder. But the one thing Evangeline can’t imagine is that Cordelia would work against her too.
This was a great book. The atmosphere is perfect for a gothic novel, but not too scary for me. Cordelia with her paralysing fear of her mother was a great character to root for, and it was wonderful to see her open up a little with Hester and her nice friends. Hester had her own story, the romance with Richard and the regrets of her past. And Evangeline was perfectly villainous with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
It’s a fairly long book for the story, but the pace was good and there was never a moment that I would be bored with it. Evangeline with her superior magic was a difficult foe for ordinary people to defeat, but they have the numbers and some unexpected help. The ending is satisfying. All in all, a good read for fans of gothic fairytales with some gory bits.
I received a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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