E. Catherine Tobler

Jackson is a boy who has grown up feeling adrift and unloved. Found as an infant in a wooden daffodil crate and brought up in an orphanage run by nuns, Jackson is the oldest and strangest of the wards at the orphanage. A boy who sometimes has scaly skin and whose limbs want to change into snakelike coils. This changes when he is put on an orphan train headed to San Francisco, CA. He is to be adopted by someone who sister Jerome Grace has told him has asked for a boy who is just like him show more

However something happens during a brief stopover in Chicago when the nuns take the children to visit the World's fair. Jackson witnesses the mistreatment of a girl with snake limbs like himself and meets a mysterious black eyed girl. Shaken by the events Jackson is calmed by Sister Jerome Grace who shows him he is not alone and tells him he needs to continue to San Francisco so he can learn to become all that he is.

Upon reaching California, he meets the woman who has requested him from the orphanage and is thrust into a world unlike that of his previous life. This world is full of magical people, a city divided into territories, and the black eyed girl glimpsed in Chicago reappears and is a key player in the events which unfurl in the months after Jackson arrives in the city. Not everything is as it seems, and Jackson seems to be the catalyst to a climactic battle between two enemies.

I was drawn into this novella. It was written with a fantastic mix of realism, fantasy and blending in mythology. This author is new to me and I really enjoyed her writing quite a bit. I ended the story wanting to know more and wishing it had been a full length novel. There were so many fantastic supporting characters and surroundings that I would have loved to explore more of. However as this was Jackson's story I understand why less focus was made on them. I also loved the mythology aspects to the story it really made this alternate nineteenth century United States an intriguing world where magic still exists alongside new technology and nothing is quite what it seems. Jackson's struggle to learn who he is and what he believes in as he is thrown into events which challenge his beliefs.

I received this as part of librarything's June early reviewer program for my honest opinion about the book. show less

I am torn about this novella, but mostly because it was not the full-length novel it needed to be. The atmosphere was thick and wonderful with sense of strangeness and veiled dangers that, like the main character, seemed to be barely contained and pushed on the margins of the pages. However, about two-thirds of the way through, the plot took a turn -- well, not really a turn, it's just that the plot kinda finally showed up and I was so confused by its sudden appearance that I thought maybe I show more had skipped some pages of explanation somewhere (I didn't). The last part jumps around from scene to scene really quickly, ruining the immersive effect it had going for it, and leaving me a little confused about its mythology. In shorter terms -- the ending was rushed and so it suffered.

Other than that though, I loved the imagery, the wordsmithing, and the foundation of the story. I'm a sucker for tentacles and tentacle monsters -- just putting my biases out there. I have other anthologies with this author in it, and now I'm much more interested to find out what they are like because there was definitely good here. If it had had more room to grow it would have been perfect for me. show less

Received this book for a review. It is a fun read starting out. There is a lot of great description right from the start and some unexpected twists right out of the first chapters.

Percy Jackson gets kidnapped by the Night Circus with an unnecessary stop at the Chicago World's Fair.

Ok, that's harsh. Generic magical boy is kind of a cardboard cutout and inhabits a weird and mystical historical San Francisco, but I never understand why he's there or what he wants, or what his magic is, or why anyone does anything. He seems to have very little agency and just gets jerked around by mystical women. blah.