Brimstone by Cherie Priest
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is my fourth novel by Cherie Priest and I'm pretty much blown away by it.

The ones I read before were all steampunk and while I really did like them, I grew out of interest in them. Luckily, Priest wrote another period piece taking place after the First World War.

The two main characters, Tomas and Alice, revolve around each other but for a very non-romantic reason. Tomas lost his wife to the Spanish Flu and he suffers shell-shock from his experiences with a flamethrower in the war, the horrific images of it. Alice is a clairvoyant moving to a town filled with clairvoyants gathering together for safety, but she, too, is haunted by flame.

What surprised me the most was that this was, at its core, a horror novel. All the build up and focus on trying to keep things together in the normal world was punctuated by flame, flame, flame. I loved it. I was thrilled by it.

The core, however, was always about love, loss, and hate. The story was pretty fantastic and universal and interesting. It's more window dressing, the fact that it's set in post-WWI. :)

I have nothing but good things to say about this novel. :) It left a very fine taste in my mouth. Delightful. :)




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