Review: The Price Guide to the Occult

The Price Guide to the Occult by Leslye Walton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Have you ever read a book that was competently written but just didn't grab you? A book that, in spite of the author's previous success (which you haven't yet read), leaves you feeling sort of lukewarm? That to me was The Price Guide to the Occult.  I didn't hate it but I didn't love it, either. Coming on the heels of so many great books I've been fortunate to read this year, this one may have suffered a bit in comparison.

Here we have Nor, a teenager possessed of magic that I actually find interesting (the ability to hear and understand animals) but which pales in comparison to her fairly awful mother Fern's magic (also, think "pales" because her mother's is dark stuff). You will notice the red-tipped ferns on the books cover. There's a message there. Nor's magical lineage dates back to her ancestor, the giantess Rona Blackburn, who moved to Anathema Island, in the mid-1800s. The Blackburns seem to have been descended from a line of nomadic magic wielders who traveled as far north as Scandinavia and as far south as Africa, as far east as India and west as Spain. The Blackburns moved to the forward-thinking United States, (where they merely hanged or drowned witches instead of burning them?) and eventually Rona moved to Anathema Island, off the coast of Washington state. Rona had some rough times with the locals, got pregnant, and used her own and her baby's blood to cast a curse on the Islanders that kind of backfired. Blackburn women have been dealing with it ever since. Nor hasn't expected it to bother her much, though. She doesn't have a lot of power and has no romantic life to speak of. Mommy Dearest, however... well. therein lies our tale. Fern authors a book about casting spells, but the spells come at a terrible price. How will Nor stop her mother?

I received a paper Advance Review Copy of this book.



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