Review of The Birdman Cycle by Thomas Rose-Masters
5 Stars
Readers in search of splatterpunk gore need not apply here.
The author mentions that this is a novel of “literary psychological suspense”;
for this reviewer, it seems more akin to the Classic Gothic subgenre of the 19th
century, with resonances of a few contemporary novels and novelists. Carefully
couched in an unnamed location, the story centers around three individuals—or is
it more than three?---living in a vast penthouse apartment high atop the
unnamed city. Laura, Nick, and the incredibly advanced and precocious
five-year-old daughter Reese: on the surface, with the wide new apartment, Nick
being offered an architectural partnership of sorts, Laura continuing her
beloved teaching, Reese with her artistry—everything should go swimmingly and
this story could be a paean to normality. Far from it, the horror creeps up on
silent cat paws (or maybe, like mist in the night) until the reader is ready to
scream aloud at certain of the revelations (I expect I really did scream when
reading Reese’s narrative of a dream), and then eventually, the psychological
horror is ratcheted tighter and higher, till every nerve is straining—both the
nerves of each individual family member, and the nerves of the reader.
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