Brimstone

by Cherie Priest

Overview

A new dark historical fantasy from the “supremely gifted”* Cherie Priest, author of Mapelcroft and Boneshaker.

In the trenches of Europe during the Great War, Tomás 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, Tomás 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 Tomás and Alice was set ablaze centuries ago by someone whose hatred transcended death itself....


*Christopher Golden, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101990735
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/04/2017
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	790,476
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Cherie Priest is the author of more than a dozen novels, including the award-winning Clockwork Century series (Boneshaker, Dreadnought, Clementine), the Cheshire Red books (Bloodshot, Hellbent), and The Borden Dispatches (Maplecroft, Chapelwood).

Editorial Reviews

★ 02/27/2017
In this pitch-perfect penny dreadful, Priest (The Family Plot) evokes the strangeness and charm of early-19th-century Florida and the fortitude of two spectacular protagonists. Alice Dartle, making a daring bid for freedom from her family home in Norfolk, Va., dreams of a man surrounded by fire. She journeys to join a community of Spiritualists in Cassadaga, Fla. where she hopes to learn how to control her natural psychic abilities. Tomás Cordero is a war veteran who’s just returned home to Ybor City, Fla., where he’s plagued by uncanny fires that seem determined to destroy all he loves. The two are brought together by powers beyond their understanding, which they must face armed only with universal love and compassion. Priest wields a brilliant command of the delightful and the frightening in this enchanting tale. Though spooky and dangerous events abound, each less logical than the last, she holds tightly to the theme that these events are rooted in human will. The detailed extrapolation of Spiritualist beliefs into reality makes the story even more terrifying than if it had a supernatural villain driving the chaos. The conclusion is both uplifting and satisfying, a fitting reward for the protagonists, who have each sought only to give help and love to those in need. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Brimstone:

"Full of charm and care, with light-hearted fun woven gently into compassionate renderings of sorrow and loss, Brimstone is equal parts affectionate romp and affecting story — not least because, given the state of the world, it's good to read books in which hate is scarier than ghosts, love is stronger than hate, and witches simply refuse to burn." --NPR.org

“Brimstone is at turns funny and unsettling, whimsical and dangerous, and makes for some great, eerie, historical fiction about a place in our own backyard."--The Daytona Beach News-Journalonline.com

Praise for Cherie Priest and the Borden Dispatches

“A remarkable novel, simultaneously beautiful and grotesque. It is at once a dark historical fantasy with roots buried deep in real-life horror and a supernatural thriller mixing Victorian drama and Lovecraftian myth. You won’t be able to put it down.”—Christopher Golden, #1 New York Times bestselling author 

“Maplecroft is dark and lyrical, haunting and brined in blood. It is as sharp as Lizzie Borden’s axe—and Borden herself is a horror heroine bar none. Cherie Priest is our new queen of darkness.”—Chuck Wendig, author of Zeroes 

“Chapelwood is devious, twisted and beautifully written. Cherie Priest is one of our very best authors of the fantastic. Brava!”—Jonathan Maberry, New York Times Bestselling Author of Ghostwalkers

“A wild, awesome page-turner....Priest has taken the real-life historical details of the Borden murders...and turned them into one of the best Lovecraftian stories I’ve ever read.”—io9

From the Publisher

03/15/2017
Clairvoyant Alice Dartle travels to the small Florida town of Cassadaga, having heard that it is a haven for spiritualists. There she hopes to learn how to better control her gifts. Meanwhile, Cuban-born tailor Tomás Cordero is haunted by terrible memories of his days as a soldier during World War I. Having lost his wife, Evelyn, to the flu, Tomás first believes the fires that spontaneously combust around him are random accidents, until he sees his dead wife's face in the ashes. He heads to Cassadaga, seeking help from Alice. But the fires seem to be the work of a spectral presence that Tomás brought back from the battlefields of Europe. Although Alice is presumably meant to be spunky and unconventional, she instead comes off as self-indulgent and lacking good sense. Tomás is a much more sympathetic character, deeply grieving and desperate to make a connection to the wife he lost. VERDICT Regardless of the flaws in one of its lead protagonists, this dark historical fantasy from Priest (Maplecroft; Boneshaker) features an intriguing setting and fascinating details about the Prohibition era that will draw in readers. [See Prepub Alert, 10/21/16.]—MM

Library Journal

2017-01-23
A young clairvoyant must save herself and her community from the ghosts a war veteran has brought home in Priest's (The Family Plot, 2016, etc.) newest fantasy/horror offering.Alice Dartle comes from a long line of witches but has found warm welcome rather than hostile prejudice in the arms of a charming spiritualist community in Prohibition-era Florida. While still learning her gifts, Alice is thrust into a struggle with a malign entity haunting a man named Tomás Cordero—a Cuban-American tailor who served in Europe during the war and brought some of its atrocities home with him. Tomás is convinced the spirit of his late wife is responsible for the increasingly dangerous fires that follow him around, while Alice thinks it's a darker force. The two race against a rising death toll to uncover both the truth of his haunting and a way to stop it before everything they both love is burned to cinders. Unfortunately, the building of this tension repeatedly requires Alice to withhold important information from her more experienced mentors—with a net result that Alice reads as immature rather than individualistic. Tomás, however, is a compelling portrait of a man driven to irrational choices by deep grief: there's a genuinely creepy scene where the desperate Tomás burns a prized possession. Despite the potential punch of Tomás' obsession, the resolution, when it comes, is more of a sputter than a conflagration. The heroes all do what they are supposed to do, and the day is saved with a great deal of understanding and acceptance on everyone's parts. A tale as amiably warm as the Florida town where it's set but with its promises of real heat fading away before a pat conclusion that ties everything off a bit too neatly.

Kirkus Reviews

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