Review: The Contortionist by Kathryn Ann Kingsley

 

Remember the time you were driving on your daily commute and you saw it: that one thing that was just entirely not the way you remembered it being, and you were dang sure that you didn't see the changes taking place? That Mandela Effect feeling of "something is very wrong in the universe?"

Well, welcome to Cora's world when one day the long abandoned and decaying Harrow Faire is suddenly no longer abandoned or decaying, but open again and hungry for guests.

Kathryn Ann Kingsley creates a glorious blend of creepy circus and carny freak-show with modern wit and skepticism.  If I had to toss a few stories in a blender to lead you to The Contortionist, I'd start with Something Wicked This Way Comes, add a little The Night Circus, and follow up with some good old fashioned Black Butler. 

I'd just go with an emphatic "do read," but it's more than that. Read it for the way Kingsley writes differently abled characters. Read it for the spider's web of atmosphere. Read it for the way you find yourself wanting the heroine to walk into the maw of the beast. Read it for the villains: the gloriously sexy villains. Read it for the existential questions it begs you to ask yourself, like "what would you give," and perhaps a little more on the nose, "what's your favorite color?"

It's book one. I want to devour the whole series like a glutton. I want to bathe in the atmosphere, and glut myself on surreal nightmarescape. I want to drink this story in and roll it around on my tongue and taste all the sweetness with the faint bitter edges. Beautiful stuff.

Fans of Kingsley's work might be surprised that it isn't particularly graphic. Regardless, it's breathtaking. 

I'm looking forward to having this whole pretty set on my library shelf soon.

When Mystical Creatures Attack

Witty.
Painfully funny.
Surprising on nearly every page, and so downright eccentric I felt like perhaps Kathleen Founds had somehow been possessed by the same perverse and brilliant muse that moved Douglas Adams and inspires Jasper FForde.
When Mystical Creatures Attacks blends whimsy and reality, raw emotion and unconventional storytelling to create something downright fabulous.
I usually do not go in for short stories, but these aren't short stories, they're glimpses through surreal windows that look out on a landscape that resembles, all too keenly, looking in.

The truth is, you'll pick it up because the cover is fabulous. That's what caught me. But you'll stick with it because it's excellent. Then, halfway through the first section, the essays from Ms. Freedman's class, you'll be flipping back to make sure you picked up a work of fiction, because each voice is so distinct, surely they couldn't all have been penned by the same woman. But they were. And then you'll be caught, just as surely as the unicorn on the cover.


I had the pleasure of reading an e-ARC of this title via Netgalley.