Mrs. Valdez has taken an assignment to be a teacher for a girl who can not leave home. This is no ordinary home, but a mansion surrounded by a labyrinth of atrocities, grotesque statues that represents the things that go bump in the night. These atrocities do not stop at the end of the labyrinth, they extend into the house, and live in the halls and stained glass. The house is a metaphor for the people that live inside it.

Isabell is Mrs. Valdez’s new charge. But she isn’t ordinary. She’s not even alive. But Mrs. Evers knows her daughter is still in the house and thinks that if she has something to occupy her mind, she will stop the pranks around the house. The cast is rounded out by Humbert Evers who will give his wife whatever she needs or wants. Happy wife, happy life. Robin is the housekeeper. She cooks, she cleans, and she is in love with her 82 inch TV. Raul is the current property caretaker. The bane of his existence is the capybara Princess who manages to frequently get out of her pen and wreak havoc around the house.

This book is a think piece. Valdez slips in and out of dreaming with such ease that the reader, like the character needs to check what she is wearing to tell if this is the real world or a dream. This story feels incomplete. We know very little about Valdez. She has lost a child of her own, and her partner has left. It is what prompted her to take this job. The reader only knows this because we walk in her dreams. The first of the book is all about Valdez and her experience of the house and the Evers. But as the story moves on, it becomes the story of the Evers, the lies of the home, and what is real and what is smoke screen.

This is meant to be a short story, but feels very unfinished. It feel like the reader jumps from one concept to another with parts of the story burned away in between. It is a Gothic exercise that i could love to see the author form into a larger work. I want to know more about the Atrocities. Why do they exist? If the house was once a church, why is everything so morbid. What happened to the Evers ,and what happened to Valdez. Plus Robin is a bit fascinating. I picture her like a mix between Rosie the Robot, and Mrs. Pigglewiggle. She is perfectly happy in a house of horrors. Is she a participant, or just oblivious?

I still can not quite say what I think of this story. Do i like it? Do I not? It’s somewhere in between. I am left with too many questions to fully form an opinion.

#MountTBR 2018

Galley complements of Tor publishing for October 2017 24in48 readathon