Boston Metaphysical Society Vol. 1

[cornerofmadness]

Boston Metaphysical Society Vol. 1 by Madeleine Holly-Rosing

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I backed the hard cover version of this on kickstarter (but can't find it on GR even with the ISBN so we'll put the review here). This is something of an alternative history/steampunk story that was a 3.5 read for me but I rounded up.

It opens in media res with a spirit photographer, Andrew, working with an ex-Pinkerton detective, Sam Hunter, whose current job is to stop ghosts from harming the living. After the events in the opener, Sam finds himself working alone except for his friend, Granville a scientific genius held back by the color of his skin. And then Andrew's daughter Caitlin appears on his doorstep wanting to work for him as she is a psychic medium and photographer too. Sam is very uncertain after what happened with Andrew and the fact this is 1895 and Cait is a woman.

Forced to give her a trial run, it works out and she starts working for him. Also in the mix is BETH a scientific consortium consisting of Alexander Graham Bell, Nikolai Tesla, Thomas Edison and Harry Houdini and they too are tracking ghosts, including one large one that is threatening all of Boston. Obviously with egos this big, they don't exactly always get along and Edison in particular dislikes Granville and his work (we'll go with racism for this one).

As they all start working toward finding this dangerous ghost, they also start working against each other with differing ideas as to how to stop it. Cait also wonders if they should be destroying ghosts vs talking to them (she is a rarity, able to hear them). We also have in this mix her mother, a spiteful woman who basically kidnaps Cait holding her in a church for an exorcism not because she cares about her but because she wants her to suffer (she's a real sweetie)

The one thing I did like a lot about this was they didn't shy away from Sam's Pinkerton background. Mostly these days we hear about them being private eyes (they're where the term originated from their advertising slogan) but they were also basically private police and strike breakers. They did some awful things. Sam did awful things that haunt him (and others know about it and torment him with them). It also didn't shy way from the anti-Irish feelings in Boston at this time.

What I didn't like was who in BETH was basically the bad guy. From every biography I've read this seems totally out of character for him. I would have bought it more from Edison (who was a well known jerk).

I liked the art except some of them looked a little too much like each other. I would like to see more of this.



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