A review by liseyp
My Brother's Keeper by Tim Powers

dark mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

Thank you to the author, publisher AdAstra, and online book club The Pigeonhole for the chance to read this. This is an honest and voluntary review.

 

The Brontë family is famed for the three famous writing daughters. But, it’s their lesser known brother Branwell who activates a family curse helping the ghost of an angry god on the path to reuniting with its twin.

 

At its core this is a decent gothic horror, but it’s diminished by the ‘hook’ of reimagining the lives of the Brontë sisters intertwined with a werewolf/ghost/family curse/cult story. 

 

I’ve read books by each of the Brontë sisters and have a basic knowledge of their lives in terms of publishing under aa pseudonym and dying young. But, unless there are a lot more references to Brontë history/novels that super fans would pick up on I don’t think any of it actually adds anything to the book. At best I found it a distraction as it pulled me out of the story when it did refer to anything about the Brontës. 

 

At worst it made me suspect that the author was trying to tell a deeper story that I was missing, and if it’s a prerequisite to have read or re-read particular novels or biographies before reading a work of fiction than it feels like that’s more a failing of the author than the reader.