As promised in my genre mashup post here, my next genre mashup is a new book by one of my favorite writers. Teagan Ríordáin Geneviene offers her southern gothic urban fantasy paranormal mystery, Atonement in Bloom, Book 2 of her Atonement series.

“Seriously?” I hear you say. “Southern gothic urban fantasy paranormal mystery?” 

If you think this particular genre mashup could use a bit more explaining, read on for a repost from a few years back. [NOTE: for those who are already experts—or just want to see how an expert does it!—please jump down to the review of Atonement in Bloom below.]

How can you tell if you are a heroine in a gothic novel?

In 1764, Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto was published and the world of genre fiction was born.

Easy-peasy! Just look for the following elements:

1. You talk funny. (“I have not yet said anything condemnatory of Mr. Rochester’s project of marrying for interest and connexions. […] All their class held these principles: I supposed, then, they had reasons for holding them such as I could not fathom. It seemed to me that, were I a gentleman like him, I would take to my bosom only such a wife as I could love; but the very obviousness of the advantages to the husband’s own happiness, offered by this plan, convinced me that there must be arguments against its general adoption of which I was quite ignorant: otherwise I felt sure all the world would act as I wished to act.“—Jane Eyre byCharlotte Brontë, 1847  [translation: “He should marry (me) for love.”]
2. Here there be monsters: the villain, preferably a monster, has scary eyes.
   1. “It was a discoloured face—it was a savage face. I wish I could forget the roll of the red eyes and the fearful blackened inflation of the lineaments!”(Emily Brontë’s Jane Eyre, who found it easier to compare the multi-racial Bertha to a vampire than to acknowledge her skin color)
   2. “…for it seemed for an instant as if the stranger had great eyes like burning flames….” (Bram Stoker’s Dracula)
3. You swoon. Lots. Like Mina, in Dracula. Jane Eyre is made of tougher stuff, but she still faints when overcome by emotion or fear. Emily, in Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolfo, swoons so regularly she’s rarely vertical.
4. You hang out in a creepy castle or at least a scary stately home, preferably with a mad not-so-ex wife locked up in the attic. (Jane Eyre at Thornfield, Rebecca at Manderly, etc.)
5. The weather sucks. No, seriously. The wind is always blowing, clouds block the sun, and odds are it’s raining. Bonus points for thunder, lightning, and fog.
6. The monster is NOT a middle-class WASP. Only really rich, really poor, preferably foreign, need apply.

Still not sure? Check out how this works in my mini-gothic below.

The Damp Moors—A Lost Brontë Novel

Guy Hero is a sympathetic and witty orphan raised by a dastardly mouth-breather stable hand. Eventually he gets a job working as a racehorse trainer for the honorable Lady Marysue of Marysue Manor. The unlikely couple rapidly succumbs to a night of unrestrained lusty passion in which Guy kisses Lady Marysue’s hand. Twice.

On the day of their wedding, an insane fingernail-biting butler escapes from the attic of Marysue Manor and starts a fire. Believing that Lady Marysue is dead, Guy flees from the church and wanders the damp moors in the rain for days, racked with pollen allergies because he forgot to bring his inhaler during his flight, until he is rescued by a modest beach chair stacker, who always has a few spare inhalers when she hits the moors.

However, although Lady Marysue is blinded by the fire, she still breathes. Without Guy she becomes unspeakably cruel and controlling. She turns to alcohol for comfort. The ghost of the butler from the attic haunts her.

Meanwhile, thinking Lady Marysue is dead, Guy accepts a marriage proposal from his savior, the beach chair stacker. However, one night he believes he can hear Lady Marysue calling, “Oh, my erstwhile blessed muse who ever guided the lost ramblings of my spirit and anchored my trembling soul, why can you not sense my tremulous essence and comfort me?” [translation for those who don’t speak fluent gothic: “Guy, haul your kiester back here now!”] and he returns to Marysue Manor.

On Guy’s return, he finds Lady Marysue drunk and sightless. Mistaking him for the ghost of the fingernail-biting butler, she attacks him with the sling-shot that belonged to the insane fingernail-biting (dead) butler, and Guy Hero dies.

As she attends to the body, Lady Marysue realizes what she has done. Driven mad with guilt, she hatches a plan to destroy the next generation by supporting far-right authoritarian political candidates with reactionary social agendas. But then she remembers that she and Guy never got around to reproducing, so she dies of consumption two weeks later.

GENRE NOTES:

• if Guy is an orphan and the stablehand is his wicked uncle whose evil plan is to steal Guy’s inheritance (a solid gold bridle which, face it, is pretty useless otherwise because the gold is pretty soft), if Marysue Manor is huge and reasonably spooky, and if the butler is a vampire, it’s a gothic novel.
• If the butler speaks with a southern accent and bites Lady Marysue when she’s dying in order to turn her into his eternal mate, it’s Gothic Paranormal
• If she’s into the biting and it’s consensual, and they live Happily (for)Ever After, it’s Gothic Paranormal Romance.
• If she’s into the biting, but kinda misses Guy too, so she bites him and the three of them live Happily Ever After with lots more biting and maybe some tying-up stuff…it’s Gothic Paranormal Romance Erotica and will probably make more than the rest of the genre writers put together.

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My Review: 4 stars out of 5 for Atonement in Bloom by Teagan Ríordáin Geneviene

 

When pigs fly… Even for Tennessee, the little town of Atonement is different. Of course Esmeralda—Ralda to her friends and, well, everybody except a few flying pigs and misinformed fae—already knew that. Her (now missing) next door neighbor occasionally has giant black wings, the handsome local florist does magic but then makes people forget it, and don’t even get her started on those glowing pigs with wings. But what really has Ralda worried is the house that just appeared, the same one everyone else seems to think has been there forever. Then her worry turns to fury when fae magic takes a decidedly dark turn, disturbing the balance of winter. Flowers appear in the snow, and further manifestations endanger Ralda’s friends. When one of them is attacked and another disappears, Ralda realizes it’s up to her to save Atonement. She just wishes she knew how to do it when all those things that go bump in the night turn out to be real.

Author Teagan Ríordáin Geneviene, a southerner by birth, was “enchanted” by the desert southwest of the USA when she moved there. She had always devoured fantasy novels of every type. Then one day there was no new book readily at hand for reading — so she decided to write one. And she hasn’t stopped writing since.
You can find Teagan at https://teagansbooks.wordpress.com/.
Don’t miss her weekly interactive steampunk serial!

I absolutely love the setting. Small towns in the South are already so full of idiosyncratic characters and moody locations that they fit perfectly into a southern gothic setting. In true gothic style, Ralda lives in Sunhold, a huge wreck of a mansion with its own graveyard. Her new neighbor, the owner of the mysteriously appearing house, is properly dapper and charming, but his eyes give him away.

“Then I saw it. I accidentally made eye contact with the man in the purple pinstripe suit. There was intensity in his eyes that did not match the gentle face. I don’t mean evil or anything over the top. However, something was definitely off kilter. I had to wonder if he was mentally stable.”

Add in an antique silver locket, attractive yet mysterious men, supernatural beings, a sheriff who speaks in Shakespeare quotes, and one small cat who seems to know more about the situation than anyone else, and you have it: a seamless southern gothic paranormal mystery genre mashup. Then if you stir in a sense of fun and humor that includes flying pigs and even a grocery store, Hogley Wogley, that echoes the South’s iconic Piggly Wiggly, and you have a recipe for a great addition to the Atonement Tennessee’s story.

I recommend this book to readers who enjoy a bit of Southern wit and humor with their tales of magical mystery. But Atonement in Bloom is definitely not a standalone. The large number of characters and prior events mean you should treat yourself to the first book, Atonement Tennessee. Although both books’ story arcs are nicely resolved, there are so many questions remaining. What really brought Ralda to Atonement? What are the supernaturals atoning for? Of course, Ralda’s cat Lilith probably knows the answers, but since she’s not talking, the rest of us will have to wait for the next installment of Atonement’s story.

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BLURB:

[click on image for preview, review, and buy links from Amazon]

Atonement in Bloom continues the urban fantasy from the point where “Atonement, Tennessee” ended.

The quaint town was stranger than Ralda Lawton could have imagined. Atonement in Bloom continues the misadventures of Ralda, her friends, and neighbors in the small (but far from peaceful) town of Atonement, Tennessee. Her old house and cemetery are still there, along with Lilith the cat, quirky townsfolk, and assorted supernaturals. (Although only she and a few others knew about that.) In a past life, Ralda―Esmeralda—had been involved in something with those supernaturals and it had carried into her present life. In Atonement, Tennessee, that almost got her killed.

Now she has new problems, and new supes to complicate matters. Now Lilith the calico sniffs out a strange beast. Fae foolery backfires. A friend is abducted.

On a cold December day, Atonement, Tennessee comes into bloom.