Customer Reviews

Sisters of Sorrow

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Boy, is this book a shock! Even though it was written/published in the early 1970's, it was frankly quite cringe-worthy to read the "N" word used so many times. Seriously, was this a norm for books written about the south in the 1970s? I can't recall any book from that decade (especially a gothic, for pete's sake) with that many instances of such a horrible word.

Beyond that, and the laughable parody of "down south" speak ("sho-nuff", "Ise", "honey chile", etc.), the plot was very predictible. I had the bad guy pegged immediately, which is usually a feat for me, but in this case an intelligent marmoset could have done it. In addition, the heroine was one of those TSTL (too stupid to live) types, who made some very strange leaps of logic and put herself in harms way to an excessive degree. Yes, yes, I know that in a gothic novel the heroine MUST do this in order to account for her fleeing-in-a-nighty-from-the-one-lit-window-house-of-doom. However, in a good gothic, it's usually a bit more well devised and subtle and you can actually see why the heroine would go down those spooky stairs, or out into that jungle of a garden, or into that decrepit old shed. In this case, our intrepid (aka "stupid") heroine obviously never took Gothic Warning Signs 101, and continually and illogically did some of the most hare-brained things I've ever seen a heroine do.

And don't even get me started on our supposed hero. For the majority of the book, he berates our heroine and says some of the most demeaning things about her intelligence (yes, I know I just berated it myself with good cause, but he's the hero, damn it!). He's also incredibly dense, and I shudder to think of what kind of children these two fictional dimwits would produce.

I've read a boat load of gothics in my day, and this one is one of the worst, IMO. Vandergriff is capable of writing some great gothic fiction (check out her wonderful "Wyndspelle" trilogy). However, this one was pretty horrifying, and all for the wrong reasons.

This book leaves no stone unturned. The reader doesn't have to guess
what happened. It is very tight and very detailed. It actually makes
you nervous for the heroine's sister, who has turned up missing.
I can't reveal a lot of details without ruining the story for
other readers, and this is one book that should not be ruined.
It is superbly written and very suspenseful.