Customer Reviews

Blackness Tower

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For years Laura Reay dreamed of a tower with people from the past living in it. Everyone except her grandfather dismissed it as her imagination until the day a calendar arrived from Cathiness, Scotland with the picture from August showing Blackness Tower, the place she has dreamed of for years.

David was looking for realism when he bought and restored Blackwell Tower. When he takes her into his house, she sees portraits of Catherine and Suzanne who could have been her twins, but lived at the tower during different eras. Laura stays with her cousin twice removed Emma who knows that Blackness Tower brought Laura over here for a purpose. Laura and David must make a treacherous journey into another realm so the ghosts of Blackwell Tower can find peace; failure means Laura will join the dead haunting the place.

Lillian Stewart Carl writes a thrilling supernatural modern day gothic thriller that starts off with a woman coming to terms with a different reality that she saw in her dreams. Now she must enter Fairy to break an evil spell that engulfs David's home. There is plenty of action with people who lived past lives influencing decisions made by the heroine. BLACKNESS TOWER focuses on a brave woman coming to grips with her gift of Sight and a man who needs healing finding love with one another.

Harriet Klausner

Back to her roots as a fantasy writer, this book is not a modern murder mystery, but the compelling story about a strange tower in the North of Scotland, which calls Lauren Reay from America to the home of her ancestors. As is the usual in Carl's books the mysteries are both ancient and modern and Lauren must work her way through a maze (both literally and figuratively) to understand not only the message of the tower but also the truth of her family's departure from Scotland and the disappearance of her father when she was only a young child.

Although Lauren hauntingly resembles a woman whose portrait was painted in the tower in the 1800's, she learns that beauty is a two-edged sword. The men who inhabit the tower are drawn to that beauty but, like the woman from the past, Lauren cannot trust that they want her for herself but only for what she seems to be.

It was difficult to know what to make of this book. In some ways it was really interesting with atmospheric writing, a varied cast of characters and an underlying historical mystery. In other ways it was a disappointment, never really gripping, sometimes very heavy going and with occasional inaccuracies in terms of the setting in Scotland.

Narrated by the central character, Lauren Reay, we follow her as she journeys to Scotland to visit Blackness Tower, a building that has been in her dreams and imagination for years before she realised it truly existed. The owner of Blackness Tower, ex-soldier David Sutherland, has been dismissive of her over the phone but when she arrives in the village and he sees her in person the situation changes. Lauren is a doppelgänger for a woman in a painting that hangs in Blackness Tower, one of her ancestors, and so starts a journey of discovery for Lauren. There's an archaeologist digging up the grave of her ancestor and TV presenter looking for proof of the paranormal and these four characters intersect, discover new things and mistrust each other until the secret behind Lauren's dreams is revealed.

I have alluded to some of the things that I didn't find satisfying in the book, the main one being the local Scottish people lapsing into Americanisms. I also found the pace of the book quite difficult to cope with, events rolling on one after the other with little time for reflection and understanding. The people were all a little weird (which I believe isn't the case in Scotland) and weren't entirely convincing as characters. However, overall it was a reasonable read, particularly with the quality of the author's descriptive writing and her imagination.

Originally published for Curled Up With A Good Book © Helen Hancox 2008

I enjoy reading time travel so I thought this book would be a fun read. While I have no idea how accurate her portrayal of Scotland (or its people) really is, it wasn't a bad story. Many of us have had dreams of other places, only to see them on tv or in a book, so it was interesting to have a main character explore her dreams and find the location. It's not too hard of a read, with a few quirky characters, and some cool mystical events.

For years, Lauren Reay had been haunted by a dream about a castle. Then, when her grandfather was on his deathbed, he received a calendar that included a photograph of the castle and a note about its location, causing Lauren to realize with a shock that her dream castle actually existed and was connected to her family. Now, her grandfather having passed away, Lauren travels to the remote north of Scotland to see the castle, Blackness Tower, and to dig into the tragic family history that led her ancestor to leave the area long ago.

Lauren soon learns that she's a dead ringer for a scandalous woman who lived at Blackness Tower a century ago, who was herself a dead ringer for another scandalous woman who lived there in the sixteenth century. Blackness Tower is haunted, and to cleanse it, Lauren must unravel the mystery that ties all three women together. Also delving into the Tower's history are three men: the new owner who has recently restored the castle, an archaeologist excavating the nearby cemetery, and a paranormal investigator looking for evidence of Blackness Tower's ghosts.

_Blackness Tower_ gets off to a slow start, and some of the language can seem overly portentous: lots of musings about fate and destiny. It does help establish Lauren as a character who is imaginative and "away with the fairies," but it can also seem melodramatic, especially when not much is happening yet.

I can pinpoint the exact moment when _Blackness Tower_ hooked me: when the excavations turned up something that was archaeologically impossible. From that point on, revelation follows quickly upon revelation, and the story catches up with its ominous language. Lillian Stewart Carl builds toward an otherworldly climax that is beautifully written, moving, and enchanting (and made me late getting back from my lunch break the day I finished it, because I just couldn't stop in the middle of it!). The central factor in the novel's resolution is not combat or even magic, but the characters' choices between healing and bitterness.

Overall, I enjoyed _Blackness Tower_ and am glad I read it. The readers who will get the most out of _Blackness Tower_ are those with a soft spot for Gothic romance and/or ancient folklore of the British Isles.

I feel totally ripped off and irate. This book is by no means sci fi/fantasy, but is nothing but a nasty Gothic romance with a little supernatural hoo ha to "justify" putting it in a better category. Dumb, because fans of Gothics might actually like this book. I loathed it. Unless you really like endless romantic entanglements and a "heroine" who attracts tons of men for no demonstrable reasons, don't buy this one.