Reviews
Re: Not Flesh Nor Feathers:
Priest’s story [Not Flesh Nor Feathers], the third in a series, is chock-full of chilling details and soaked to the bone with suspense. ~Southern Living
The most recent installment of Eden’s story, Not Flesh Nor Feathers, continues Priest’s exploration of how the South’s dead don’t stay that way while subtly evoking a regional landscape that won’t commit to letting them go. Like the best trilogies, Flesh doesn’t require encyclopedic knowledge of what has come before. A reader new to Priest could easily pick up Flesh and enjoy the hell out of its scary tale of Chattanooga, the river, and a horde of zombies. ~Baltimore’s City Paper
This one has all the elements of a good ghost story: family secrets, mysterious disappearances and Tennessee River zombies attacking the town. Well-written, quick paced and detailed, every page is a shivering delight. ~BookPage
I’m not sure how much attention Cherie Priest is getting from the horror audience, but it’s almost certainly not enough. Her third adventure of Eden Moore underlines that point even more boldly than in her earlier works. … it’s a taut, well conceived, and skillfully executed thriller by one of the brightest (darkest?) of recent newcomers to the horror field.~Don D’Ammassa
Spectacular scenes of chaos and horror in a flood-drenched Chattanooga invigorate Priest’s third Eden Moore fantasy (after 2006’s Wings to the Kingdom). A devastating storm swells the Tennessee River to dam-breaking levels on the eve of Eden’s planned move into a new riverside apartment complex. With the gushing waters comes a tide of corpses sunk in the river for more than a century, now animated and organized by a malignant force with an inscrutable purpose. When psychic investigator Eden realizes that the zombie army is converging on historic Read House, she draws a connection to the ghost of Caroline Read, who haunts the building trying to resolve a hushed-up 19th-century atrocity. Although talky and too dependent on convenient last-minute information, Priest’s tale crackles with action and occult thrills, especially in the scenes of the inundated city reeling under the double assault of Mother Nature and the supernatural. Fans will find this her most assured outing yet. (Oct.) ~Publishers Weekly
Re: Dreadful Skin:
Priest’s first novel, Four and Twenty Blackbirds, made gothic mincemeat of Southern history. Dreadful Skin solidifies her horror cred. ~Sacramento News & Reviews
Dreadful Skin’s design is carefully crafted to evoke the penny dreadfuls and melodramas so popular in the nineteenth century, another way in which the connection with Gothic novels is made. But while the prose rushes forward with a kind of breathlessness well suited to the promise of the summaries, there’s restraint in the levels beneath the plot. Priest is tackling classic genre questions that feature prominently in such nineteenth-century speculative works as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus and Bram Stoker’s Dracula: What separates humans from monsters? How well can we control our beastly instincts? Like her genre forebears, Priest doesn’t offer any easy answers, and her work is all the more memorable as a result. ~Strange Horizons
While there is still no archetypal werewolf novel in the way Dracula serves for vampires, Dreadful Skin comes closer in my opinion to demonstrating just how seductive and soul-destroying lycanthropy could be. ~Weird Tales
… The goosebumps raised by my contact with this dreadful skin will doubtless lure me to other works by Priest. She is already a strong voice in dark fantasy and could, with care, be a potent antidote for much of what is lacking elsewhere in the genre this decade. ~Rambles.net
Priest has done such an amazing job of crafting this novel, she has created such deep and rich characters — even those who are doomed — in her descriptions and dialog. She has written a smash bang of a story; a tale that draws readers in from the very beginning and keeps you turning pages long into the night. You will not be able to let Eileen and her mission and all her inner conflict go — she is the sort of character who stays with you from the first moment you meet. I was fairly dazzled by Dreadful Skin, by the innovative way that Priest has found to tell an age old story and by the richly chosen words she has used to embrace it. This one crosses all the genre lines and soundly delivers on the promise of good storytelling. A reader could not ask for anything more from a fiction writer, and Cherie Priest, thankfully, has given us her best. ~Bookslut
A werewolf-hunting nun, characters portrayed with empathy and skill, Gorey-esque illustrations, high adventure and pathos–-there’s nothing to dislike about Dreadful Skin. Absolutely nothing. ~Jess Nevins, author of Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana
A runaway Irish nun pursues a murderous werewolf across post–Civil War America in this riveting Southern gothic from Priest (Wings to the Kingdom). Divided into three atmospheric, slightly disjointed sections, the story opens aboard a riverboat carrying John Gabert, the werewolf, and Sister Eileen Callaghan, who’s pursuing him with a Colt revolver hidden under her skirts. Gabert escapes, but Eileen is infected by the lycanthrope’s blood. Nine years later, she picks up the scent, investigating a traveling Pentecostal revivalist show that leaves a trail of chewed corpses in its wake. Eileen struggles to control her own bloody urges, while fighting to protect innocents before she confronts Gabert again, two years later. Though the jumps in time make the plot feel forced, the haunting characters will keep readers turning the pages. When one must become a monster in order to kill a monster, can the hunt still be justified? This book raise tantalizing philosophical questions about good and evil as well as the roles of hunter and prey. ~Publishers Weekly
Re: Wings to the Kingdom:
This is an excellent work, rich in local flavor, nicely steeped in goosebumps, and filled with characters you want to know more about. Well done. ~Bookgasm
Wings To The Kingdom is not precisely a sequel, but a second chapter set in Eden’s overlapping worlds — Priest’s beautifully detailed culture of the South, and the world of the dead: immediately adjacent, and always visible to Eden. Wings is more firmly based in the physical world than Blackbirds was, but it’s every bit as fascinating. Once again, Priest succeeds in making her story both straightforward and exquisitely strange. ~The Green Man Review
The Georgia battlefield of Chickamauga, where 35,000 soldiers died during the Civil War, is haunted by ghosts in particular by Old Green Eyes, whose presence allows the dead to rest in peace. When Old Green Eyes disappears, specters in ragged uniforms seek out medium Eden Moore to be their go-between, whether she wants to or not. Priest’s sequel to Four and Twenty Blackbirds brings the past to life in a Southern Gothic tale of supernatural adventure and human drama. ~Library Journal
The Civil War battlefield at Chickamauga, Georgia, where thousands of Confederate and Union soldiers died, is the country’s oldest national military park. There have long been tales of sighting Old Green Eyes, said to be the guardian of the battle’s dead, and now there’s a new wrinkle. To wit, sightings of ghosts trying to communicate vocally but ultimately resorting to pointing frustratedly across the battlefield. What do they want? Enter Eden Moore, first introduced in Priest’s Four and Twenty Blackbirds (2005), who enlists the aid of a couple of college classmates to try to photograph and record the ghosts. All hell breaks loose as a pair of celebrity ghost hunters shows up, and also a crazed killer shooting at anything that moves on the field. The plot, which begins slowly by setting the stage, builds a roiling crescendo and climaxes in an explosive scene at the top of the tower at the battlefield’s edge. The flamboyant mix of ghosts, the preternatural Old Green Eyes, and murder keeps one on edge. ~Booklist
Cherie Priest’s ‘Wings to the Kingdom’ is the second novel in what we are told is the “Eden Moore Trilogy”, and to my mind that’s a shame. Only a trilogy? Well, we’ll take what we can get, especially when what we can get is a consummately crafted novel that is neither fish nor fowl, but simply a wonderfully written tale of imagination, the supernatural all wrapped up in a deep south family saga. … These Eden Moore books, put simply, rock. ~ The Agony Column
Although billed as the second book of a trilogy (following the excellent Four and Twenty Blackbirds), Wings to the Kingdom stands completely on its own. You should read Four and Twenty Blackbirds first, but only because it’s a great book; you don’t need to have read it to enjoy Wings. One unusual thing about Wings, as the second book of a trilogy, is how different in tone it is to Blackbirds; whereas Blackbirds felt like a modern take on classic gothic horror, Wings feels much more like a contemporary horror novel. Or a better way to put it might be to say that Blackbirds was more of a literary horror novel, while Wings is more of a fun and Buffyesque one. Which is not to say it is in any way inferior; Priest somehow manages both modes with equal skill. ~ John Joseph Adams, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show
I’m more than ecstatic to have discovered Cherie Priest so early on. Ten years down the line when she’s got a handful of books out and everyone is tossing her name around like she’s Stephen King’s holy granddaughter, I’ll gladly smile and nod, maybe throw out a “I knew her when…” ~Fantasy Book Spot
In Cherie Priest’s sequel to her stellar debut novel Four and Twenty Blackbirds, the South rises again: or more specifically, the ghosts of the South. Chickamauga, Georgia, is the site of the oldest military park in the country - a place where a reported 35,000 soldiers died bloody deaths. The park has long been rumored to be haunted by a ghostly entity nicknamed Old Green Eyes, a hulking spirit with a glowing gaze that guards the souls of the dead from harm. But when visitors to the much-historied battlefield (scene of the last major Confederate victory of the Civil War), begin seeing ghostly apparitions in tattered uniforms desperately pointing off into the distance, the supernatural uproar attracts a team of well-known ghost hunters, Dana and Tripp Marshall, who vow to get to the bottom of the otherworldly mystery.
Eden Moore, a “biracial Southern girl” who can see the spirits of the dead, is also drawn into the unearthly drama when she encounters the horrifying green-eyed wraith while lost in the woods near a mental institution for the criminally insane. Why isn’t Old Green Eyes watching over the souls of the dead at Chickamauga? And what are the old ghosts of the Civil War battlefield so frantically pointing to? Darkly poetic, powerfully atmospheric and hypnotically readable, Cherie Priest is to dark fantasy what fresh roasted coffee is to mornings - simply essential. ~ Paul Goat Allen, Barnes & Noble
Re: Four and Twenty Blackbirds:
Much has been made in the online community about how an early draft of “Four and Twenty Blackbirds” was published on Priest’s personal blog before being spotted by an interested editor. Whatever its genesis, this expanded version is a remarkably assured debut, a creepy modern-day Southern gothic that doesn’t rely on cliche but delivers an emotional, powerful tale of self-discovery and the supernatural. ~ San Francisco Chronicle
Ghost stories are a dime a dozen, so it’s especially satisfying when one comes along that makes you forget all the others you’ve read, and sucks you into the narrative so completely that you’ll stay up all night finishing it because you can’t wait to find out what happens next…and because you’re too creeped out to go to sleep. Eden’s ghostly warnings (”He’s coming. He’s coming, baby. You get yourself gone.”) are chillingly (and delightfully) macabre, but also serve to heighten the tension of the narrative, keeping the reader on edge. This, coupled with Blackbirds’ vividly-described settings, really draws the reader into the story, making it all the more easy to connect and empathize with the characters. The relentless pacing meanwhile, never lets up and rarely gives the reader the chance to take a breath …
All in all, Blackbirds is a stunning debut novel, one that displays the finely-honed prose and tightly-drawn characterizations of a master craftsman. So, heed the voices: Get yourself gone. And while you’re out, stop by the bookstore and pick up a copy of Four and Twenty Blackbirds. You’ll be glad you did. ~ Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show
It’s tempting, when learning that a book is an author’s first, to remain aware of that as you’re reading, almost looking for signs that the writer is a novice. While reading Four and Twenty Blackbirds, I either didn’t find any, or got so swept up in the story that I didn’t care anymore and forgot to look. Either way, Priest’s debut sucked me in and kept me riveted with her darkly atmospheric prose. ~ Fangoria
What do you get when you weave together a ghost story, a voodoo mystery, a family curse, a sharp-tongued protective Aunt, a murderous young man intent on doing ‘God’s Will,’ and a bullheaded young woman determined to learn her origins? The answer: Four and Twenty Blackbirds, a fantastic debut novel by Cherie Priest that leads the reader on a merry chase down a not-so-primrose path from her home in Tennessee to the desolation of an condemned insane asylum, and finally to a fetid swamp in Florida ….
Close the doors, turn off the phone, get a glass of sweet tea and settle into your favorite reading chair. This is one you’re not going to want to put down. ~ Black Gate Magazine
Has this ever happened to you? You pick up a book, start reading the first page never intending to read more than a page or two to get a feel for the writing and, before you know it, you’re twenty-some-odd pages into it and still want to keep reading? That’s what happened to me with Cherie Priest’s Southern gothic debut novel: Four and Twenty Blackbirds …
Priest does an excellent job of building tension throughout the novel, in fact, up to and including the satisfying ending. Writing that can simultaneously set a mood, flesh out characters and advance plot is a force to be reckoned with. With writing this good appearing in a debut novel, I have no doubts that we will be hearing from Cherie Priest again and again. ~SFSignal.com
… There’s mystical, sultry appeal in the thick Chattanooga atmosphere and strong characterizations (Eden’s tongue is as sharp as the heels of her signature black boots), and a mixed-race heroine lends welcome diversity to a genre well populated with porcelain-complected heroines. ~Booklist
Haunting. Mesmerizing. Unforgettable. Adjectives cannot adequately describe the singular narrative brilliance of Cherie Priest’s debut novel. Four and Twenty Blackbirds, a contemporary ghost story with elements of Southern gothic, supernatural mystery and dark fantasy, follows an orphaned girl’s harrowing journey into adulthood and her desperate quest to find out who she really is. …
Priest’s Four and Twenty Blackbirds is one of those exceedingly rare literary gems that will not only engage and challenge readers on a cerebral level but also masterfully manipulate their emotions as well. Lyrical, poignant and brilliantly understated, Priest’s debut novel is a genre transcendent storytelling tour de force. Fans of writers like Stephen King, Dean Koontz and Peter Straub will absolutely fall in love with this spellbinding novel - and Cherie Priest, who is undeniably one of the most exciting new authors to come along in years. ~Paul Goat Allen, Barnes and Noble
… Priest kills as a stylist. Debut novel? You could have fooled me. Four and Twenty Blackbirds feels like it was written by an author with the assurance and experience of already having many books under her belt. It simply oozes a contemporary Southern Gothic charm, by which I mean that while it’s definitely set in the present, its roots are firmly entangled in the past.
The narrator’s voice is pitch-perfect, the cast wonderfully eccentric and realized, the plot suitably puzzling and steeped in mystery, and that setting. I could feel the humidity while I was reading the book. Hear the mosquitoes. Smell the damp forests. Share the same eerie frisson of the narrator as she explores the old abandoned sanitarium in the woods.
In other words, the book has everything going for it and you should definitely pick up a copy to see for yourself. ~ Charles De Lint, Fantasy and Science Fiction
A supernatural gothic tale with all the flavor of the Old South … This is Cherie Priest’s first novel and though that shows to some extent as the novel morphs subtly into various different kinds of novels, all those novels are good ones and she manages to blend them very entertainingly. The stories they tell and the characters they present continue to hold the full attention of the reader, certainly this reader, from the first page of the book to its last. ~Realms of Fantasy
The classic Southern gothic gets an edgy modern makeover in Priest’s debut novel about a young woman’s investigation into the truth of her origins. What Eden Moore digs up in the roots of her diseased family tree takes her across the South, from the ruins of the Pine Breeze sanitarium in Tennessee to a corpse-filled swamp in Florida, and back in time to the Civil War, when the taint in her family bloodline sets in motion events building only now to a supernatural crescendo. Priest adds little new to the gothic canon, but makes neo-goth chick Eden spunky enough to deal with a variety of cliché menaces—a scheming family matriarch, a brooding Poe-esque mansion and a genealogy greatly confused with inbreeding—that would have sent the genre’s traditional wilting violets into hysterics. Eden is a heroine for the aging Buffy crowd, and her adventures will play best to postadolescent horror fans. ~Publishers Weekly
… This is a nicely done southern-tinged literary horror novel. Yes, I said it, the dread genre: HORROR. This is not dark fantasy, nor is it magic realism. This is supernatural southern gothic, horror, I tell you — the horror. I know the booksellers are more frightened of the horror genre than they are of the monsters described in horror novels, but they’ll have to get over it. I don’t know what they’re going to do with this one on the shelves. Will they stick it with fiction, which is probably where I would put it? Or will they file with books full of elves and magic and whatnot? Who knows, it’s very early days yet. … You may have to ask your book-helper to help you find this when it comes out. But you know, with a pub date in October, maybe they’re planning on the Halloween-resurrection of the horror genre shelves. Or maybe, they’ll file Priest just before O’Connor in the fiction section. Where she belongs. ~ The Agony Column
Other writers are kind enough to chime in:
“Southern Gothic at its best. An absorbing mystery told with humour and bite.” ~Kelley Armstrong, author of Industrial Magic and the Otherworld series
“Cherie Priest has created a chilling page-turner in her debut novel. Her voice is rich, earthy, soulful, and deliciously southern as she weaves a disturbing yarn like a master! Awesome—gives you goosebumps!” ~L.A. Banks, author of Minion and The Vampire Huntress Legend Series
“Breathlessly readable, palpably atmospheric and compellingly suspenseful, Four and Twenty Blackbirds is a considerable debut. It’s written with great control and fluency, and it looks like the start of quite a career.” ~ Ramsey Campbell, World Horror Grand Master
“Spooky and engrossing, this revenge play is as sticky as a salmagundi made from blood and swamp dirt. Priest can write scenes that are jump-out-of-your-skin scary. This is the first installment in what I can only hope will be a long and terrifying friendship.” ~ Cory Doctorow, author of Eastern Standard Tribe and Someone Comes To Town, Someone Leaves Town
“Fine writing, humor, thrills, real scares, the touch of the occult . . . had me from the first page. I read straight through. An absolutely wonderful debut, and a book not to be missed.” ~Heather Graham, New York Times bestselling author of Haunted
“Wonderful. Enchanting. Amazing and original fiction that will satisfy that buttery Southern taste, as well as that biting aftertaste of the dark side. I loved it.” ~Joe R. Lansdale, Stoker- and Edgar-winning author of The Bottoms
“Cherie Priest has mastered the art of braiding atmosphere, suspense and metaphysics into a resonant ghost story that offers even more than what you hope for.” ~Katherine Ramsland, bestselling author of GHOST: Investigating the Other Side
“Cherie Priest kicks ass! Four and Twenty Blackbirds is lush, rich, intense, and as dark and dangerous as a gator-ridden swamp.” ~Maggie Shayne, New York Times bestselling author of Blue Twilight