What’s the book? Rose of Jericho by Alex Grecian
How dark is it? Like a fairy tale, but one of the original Grimm tales where feet get chopped off and people get burned alive and stuff
How good is it? 7/10 dying roses
This is a sequel of sorts to Red Rabbit, featuring some of the same characters coming together to solve a new problem. Rabbit, a small child in the first book, is all grown up into a young woman now. She’s just moved, with her mother Sadie Grace and her mother’s partner Rose Nettles, to the New England town of Ascension.
Meanwhile, Moses Burke, a former Union soldier and part of Rabbit’s big childhood adventure, has settled down out west with a wife and a child on the way. Only his wife, Katie, is wasting away from an illness. When she dies, and their child dies just barely after Katie, Moses is so full of grief that he tracks Death down and shoots him. Surprisingly, that doesn’t make Moses feel better. In fact, Moses soon realizes killing and burying Death might have been a very bad idea. It turns out stopping death doesn’t actually stop illness or injury or even bodily decay, it just kind of traps everyone’s souls in their clearly nonfunctioning bodies until they go a little crazy. Oops.
Having no idea how to fix the problem he created, Moses heads east to find Sadie Grace, the most powerful witch he knows of and the only person he knows personally who might have any idea what to do next. While he makes the journey east, things in Ascension are rapidly falling apart.
Turns out Ascension was already a weird little town, heir to the old-time witch hunting obsession of the Puritans. When folks start walking around who should clearly not be some of the townsfolk don’t take it well. In fact, some of them connect the weirdness to their brand new neighbors on the hill. It’s a pickle. Then, as if Sadie and Rabbit didn’t have their hands full with the witch hunting stuff already, Rose’s undead cousin insists on throwing them a housewarming party.
This book retains the folkloric feel of the first one but it’s just so much more bloody. There’s less pure evil this time but much more fundamentally wrong with the world. Most of the characters are quite endearing, even the undead ones, so I felt bad for them as the world slumped sideways toward chaos. I enjoyed the ending, which was touching if not exactly happy.
Humorous charm blended with gut-wrenching horror really works for me. It doesn’t feel real enough to keep me up at night or truly scare me but it has just enough edge to be unpredictable. I really have to fear for the characters and wonder what comes next for them, which keeps me interested. I also love a world that just . . . takes magic and weirdness as a given. The townsfolk might think it’s wrong for Sadie Grace to be a witch but they don’t doubt that she is one. Moses Burke might be crazy to shoot Death but he’s completely sure that’s a thing he can do. I enjoy that magical worldview and I find it surprisingly comforting despite the horror and blood.
Darker Books 