{"id":931,"date":"2018-03-17T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-05T19:49:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=931"},"modified":"2025-01-02T09:13:51","modified_gmt":"2025-01-01T20:13:51","slug":"the-wicked-cometh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2018\/03\/17\/the-wicked-cometh\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wicked Cometh"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><strong>Laura Carlin<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><em>Hachette<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size\">Otago Daily Times, March 17th 2018<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">British author Laura Carlin\u2019s debut is a melodramatic <em>melange \u2013 <\/em>a little bit Bront\u00eb, a dash Dickens, a wink Waters, a piece of Poe \u2013 that captures the spirit of the Victorian Gothic without taking itself the least bit seriously.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">The story opens in London during the winter of 1831, where 18 year-old Hester White, orphaned daughter of a country parson, lives with her Papa\u2019s former gardener and his wife \u201con the lowest terms life has to offer\u201d. Here in the filthy alleys of London\u2019s poorest quarters her middle-class upbringing and education count for nothing, and her desperation to escape is heightened by a series of missing person cases that have left the city\u2019s inhabitants on edge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Then, just as her spirits reach their lowest ebb, she is struck down and seriously injured by the carriage of a young doctor who immediately identifies her as an ideal subject upon which to test his hypothesis that \u2018even those from the gutter can be educated\u2019. Although perfectly able to read and write English, Latin <em>and<\/em> Greek, Hester is as eager to drag herself out of the slums as he is to assist her, and plays the role of foundling so convincingly that within days she is installed in family\u2019s country house under the tutelage of his older sister, Rebekah. Greatly struck by her new mistress\u2019s beauty and charm, Hester works diligently to win her esteem, and the two women quickly develop feelings for each other rather closer than that propriety and circumstance allow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">This domestic drama plays out against the backdrop of the disappearance of men, women and children from London\u2019s streets, a roll call of the missing which includes two of Rebekah\u2019s former maids. When her \u2018pupil\u2019 finally confesses her true origins, the women team up in an effort to find them, a decision that brings their hidden passions into the open and leads them into dangers that prove uncomfortably close to home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">High literature this is not, nor does it pretend to be. Every aspect of the book, from its opulent gold-tooled, purple velvet cover to the breathless voice of her teenage heroine, unapologetically signal it as B-grade entertainment of the most rollicking sort. Light, entertaining, and jolly good fun, <em>The Wicked Cometh<\/em> is the perfect beachside read, although the sand might prove difficult to dislodge from the binding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-small-font-size\"> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.odt.co.nz\/entertainment\/books\/rollicking-good-read\">https:\/\/www.odt.co.nz\/entertainment\/books\/rollicking-good-read<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Laura Carlin<br \/>\n<br \/>\nOtago Daily Times review March 17th 2018<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[278,370,421,279,18],"class_list":["post-931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-278","tag-fiction","tag-historical","tag-laura-carlin","tag-odt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=931"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1862,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931\/revisions\/1862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}