Set in New York in 1886 for no reason, young Daphne Byrne and her mother are mourning the recent death of her beloved dad - but no-good mediums is out to take advantage of their grief! And demons haunt Daphne too! You know Rosemary’s Baby? It’s that but worse.
So this is another Hill House stinker! I wasn’t entertained by any of it. Mediums are frauds?! Say it ain’t so! Except, weirdly, spirits and the afterlife here are real so mediums are charlatans not because they claim to tap into a realm that isn’t there, because that realm does exist in this book, but because they just don’t have the ability like Daphne does. Or maybe Daphne’s imagining it all…? Eh, I don’t care. And she’s not. And the sceptic character ain’t a great person either so both sides get stupidly blasted by Laura Marks.
Veteran artist Kelley Jones draws this one. He’s drawn everything from Batman to Sandman in a multi-decades-long career and you’re either a fan at this point or you’re not - his style isn’t going to change. I’ve never really dug Jones’ art and he’s definitely not doing his best work on this book. The horror is cliched and the character designs are inconsistent and ugly. Honestly, these are the oldest teenagers in the world - some of the girls look like middle-aged male bus drivers on a stag night.
There isn’t much else to say. The dull story ends on an overfamiliar horror trope and the whole thing is unimpressive and instantly forgettable. Horror’s a tough genre to get right as Laura Marks proves with her feeble Daphne Byrne.
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