In today’s Countdown to Hallowe’en review, Randy M returns to a series he’s previously read in 2019…
——————————-
Princess Ayesha stared down into the lotus pool. ….
Mary: Why in the world are you starting with Ayesha? This is supposed to be a book about us.
Catherine: Our readers won’t understand what happens later if I don’t tell them about Ayesha – how she became a priestess and her time at the temple. Anyway, Egypt is very fashionable nowadays. Everyone wants Egyptian furniture, clothes, jewelry. Why not a book?
Mary: But this book isn’t about Egypt. It’s about – well, England. And us, as I said.
Catherine: Fine, I’ll start with us. But it’s not going to be anywhere near as exciting.
Mary Jekyll stared out the train window. …
And so the collaboration/bickering, portrayed with consistent wryness, persists into the third book in the Athena Club series, in which Mary Jekyll (President of the club; pragmatic, a planner), Diana Hyde (Mary’s teenage half-sister; improvisational, impulsive, instinctively belligerent), Beatrice Rappacini (healer; elegant feminist), Catherine Moreau (writer; instinctive), and Justine Frankenstein (artist; tall and strong, but vulnerable and sensitive), whose characters were all previously established, continue the adventure that links back to both the first volume, The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter and the second, European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman. And it’s also worth noting, that while their banter and decisions stem from what we already know of them, we can see that each has grown in some way. (Except perhaps Diana, but then she would deny having changed, grown or done anything you would want or expect from her anyway.)
Mary, Justine and Diana return to England after their Continental adventures with Irene Adler, an Egyptian priestess, Mina Harker, a certain Transylvanian Count and the Countess Karnstein, among others. Aware that Mary’s employer, Mr. (Sherlock) Holmes has gone missing and their maid, Alice (aka Lydia Raymond), has been kidnapped by her mother, Helen Raymond, the Athena Club begins an investigation of their own, aided as much as possible by Dr. Watson and the Baker Street Irregulars. Still, the reasons for these events remain hazy early on. When the Club is once again whole Goss gradually reveals a conspiracy with nation-wide, even world-wide implications, culminating in facing various villains, including another Egyptian Priestess, and a show down on the Cornish coastline at Kyllion Keep (which might be a spoiler if you’ve read the right 19th century novel).
The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl feels like a return to the form of the first book in the trilogy, The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, after the entertaining but somewhat cumbersome European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman. Keeping the main action in the British Isles allows Goss to focus her narrative events more narrowly, without devoting space to travel and filling that space with less consequential events, however entertaining. Further, Goss does a splendid job of juggling her main characters, offering each enough depth to be believable and relatable despite their origins in the stories many of her readers will have already read or know from films.
The ways in which Goss engaged with the position of women in the society of the 19th century in the earlier books – Diana’s disdain for convention, Beatrice’s feminist thinking and critique of fashion while also being drawn to fashion, Mary’s level-headed pragmatism at a time when women are supposed emotional – are still in play here, having become the foundation for the actions the Club takes and giving them a new, tested cohesion in their efforts. Brought more to the forefront are the different means by which women gain power, how they deal with men and what feminine revenge might look like: The men who initiated much of what happened in the previous volumes move into the background, the main battles here between women with power, grit, determination, and deeply differing agendas.
Not really horror, the trilogy is a work of fantasy that examines the foundations of horror, using the inventions of those works as springboard to question – and sometimes mock – the conventional use of female characters. I wouldn’t hazard to call this trilogy a classic but, well-written and inventive, and certainly entertaining. I fully believe many readers would find this trip back in time amusing and even a little illuminating.
THE SINISTER MYSTERY OF THE MESMERIZING GIRL by Theodora Goss (Saga Press, 2019)
464 pages
ISBN: 978-1534427884
Review by Randy M.
