July 4, 2011
Alchemy and love prove a volatile mix in Katsu's vividly imagined first novel, which toggles between the present and the past. While working the graveyard shift at a rural Maine hospital, Dr. Luke Findley discovers that patient Lanny McIlvrae has miraculous self-healing powers. Lanny then relates the incredible tale of her life: sent packing to Boston by her family in 1817 to give birth to her illegitimate child, she fell in with the entourage of Count Adair, a centuries-old alchemist who saved her life with an elixir of immortality. Decadent and domineering, Adair took Lanny as his mistressâa role she accepted until Adair's scheme to use her true love, Jonathan, to perpetuate his unnatural existence forced her to a desperate ruse to thwart his formidable magic powers. Katsu shows considerable skill in rendering a world where Adair's unspeakable evilness and Lanny's wild passion make the supernatural seem possible. The result is a novel full of surprises and a powerful evocation of the dark side of romantic love.
April 15, 2011
A backwoods Maine doctor falls under the spell of a confessed killer whose loves and sorrows go back two centuries.
When Dr. Luke Findley undresses Lanore McIlvrae, the murder suspect the St. Andrew sheriff has brought into Aroostook County Hospital, he discovers that although her clothes are saturated in blood, her body is unwounded; every drop came from the man she admits she slashed to death. Even so, Lanny tells Luke that the murder was anything but murder and begs him to help her escape. After he's treated to an unnerving demonstration of her claim that she's not just an ordinary killer, he agrees. During their headlong flight to Canada and freedom, she fills in her back story for him, and what a back story it is. Lanny's troubles began at age 12, when she first spotted beautiful Jonathan St. Andrew, the son of the town's wealthy founder, at church back in 1809. Although Jonathan was happy to acknowledge her love, he never exactly returned it, and her tempestuous tale takes her from romantic disappointments, crises and encounters with evil to a genre-crossing exile in Boston, where she's taken in by the Mephistophelean savior who'll become her fate: Count Adair cel Rau, whose own lengthy back story, which stretches back to 1349, is even more eventful than hers. Adair and his unholy retinue don't suck anyone's blood, but the gift of eternal life he offers in return for the souls of his lovers and followers will sound awfully familiar to vampire lovers everywhere. Debut novelist Katsu adds heavy foreshadowing, insistent underlining and a suffocating earnestness to this familiar story of the bonds that never die.
Beneath the trappings of undead lore is a love story that's deeply old-fashioned, and not just because the principals were born 200 years ago.
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July 1, 2011
On a cold winter night a young woman is brought into an emergency room in the small Maine town of St Andrew. Lanore McIlvrae is covered in blood and probably injured, but the sheriff also believes she murdered someone. When Lanore is alone with emergency physician Luke Findley, she tries desperately to convince him of her innocence, telling her story in mind-numbing detail. In the late 19th century, she met and fell in love with Jonathan, the man Lanore is now accused of killing. At one point, Lanore's family sent her from the town to avoid a terrible scandal. During this journey, she met the man who made her immortal and brought her back to Jonathan. Finally, the plot begins to move, although at times the pace is still slow. VERDICT Hard-core romance readers might enjoy this debut novel, but it is not a necessary purchase.--Patricia Altner, Biblioinfo.com, Columbia, MD
Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from June 1, 2011
Katsu's imaginative, wholly original debut is the story of Lanore McIlvrae, a young woman who is found in the Maine woods claiming she's killed a man. When the police bring her to Dr. Luke Findley, she implores him to help her, claiming that she's immortal and offering him proof. Lanore convinces him to help her escape police custody and begins to tell Luke her story. Raised in the Puritan community in St. Andrew, Maine, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Lanore is just a girl when she falls in love with the preternaturally beautiful Jonathan St. Andrew. Lanore and Jonathan become friends, but his feelings never match hers. The two have an affair in their teens, and Lanore winds up pregnant. Knowing Jonathan's family won't allow him to marry her, Lanore's parents send her away to Boston to have the child. There she falls under the sway of a powerful man, who gives her an unexpected gift and sets in motion the chain of events that will lead her to take a life almost two centuries later. Readers won't be able to tear their eyes away from Katsu's mesmerizing tale.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)