Somebody in Rosemary Jones's world loves silent films. Not only is Mask of Silver a good horror story, it is also a lesson in film making primer in the glory days of films before talkies. I'm not a student of film so this was new territory for me and I enjoyed learning the many ways simple technology could be used to produce the effects that make these films great.

Prohibition is still the law of the land and racism is the norm. Chinese American Jenny Lin is the costume designer for filmmaker Sydney Fitzmaurice, who has dragged his company from Hollywood to his home town of Arkham, Massachusetts, to produce his new film in his family mansion. "Mask of Silver" will feature his star: Renee Love, and other members of his usual cast and crew, plus Max, the studio's bean counter.

Renee and Jenny share a secret. They are sisters, orphaned children of an illegal marriage between a white man and a Chinese woman, brought up together in Oakland, California. Renee is able to pass for white and when she took the train to Hollywood, Jenny came too and now poses as her dresser, travelling together and living near each other. They hide their relationship from everyone, including Sydney.

Arkham Horror is a series developed by Aconyte Books set in and around Arkham, which as Lovecraft fans know, is a medium sized city somewhere in Massachusetts that also sits at the edge of other, darker worlds. Arkham is the home of Miskatonic University with its famous programs of ancient history, dead languages, and occult studies; a research library that houses one of the world's best collection of mystical arcana; and a noted museum of occult artifacts. Although cosmopolitan Massachusetts is only a train-ride away, not so far in other directions lie an impenetrable swamp and deep forest wilderness: dark hollers, murky hummocks, and people who don't venture out much.

The Fitzmaurice mansion is a house of mystery and death. It has burned once or twice consuming some if Sydney's ancestors alive. Yet the house is fully furnished right down to locked trunks in the attic. Creepy family portraits line the walls, and somehow the hallway mirrors reflect around corners.

This new film "Mask of Silver" is one of a string of Fitzmaurice horror masterpieces. Sydney wants it to be different enough to be exciting but still to contain some of his recognizable set pieces, especially the recurring figure of the masked man; masked in silver this time.

To keep things fresh, Sydney bring a new co-star up from Broadway, Lulu McIntyre, along with her lover, writer Eleanor Nash. Eleanor can help Sydney with the film script that is less a document than an idea that progresses along with the filming. Lulu has not worked in film before, and we learn along with her how it's done, as the camera cranks away.

Despite not having much of a script, Sydney is trying to keep to a tight schedule that inexplicably requires filming the final scene on the night of the summer solstice. There is no logical reason for it, but Sydney makes up some story about a family legend he wants to work into the plot. The cast and crew, who are growing more uneasy by the day, just want to finish the film and get away from the house as fast as possible.

This is a suspense story more than it is horror and we see it all through Jenny Lin's eyes. Jenny knows that Sydney is up to something. She knows the house is helping him. She knows that Renee is the pivot point and that the silver mask is evil. The suspense builds as recurring nightmares, inexplicable events, unlikely injuries, cast disappearances, and other accoutrements of horror tales start happening as the solstice approaches.

I read Mask of Silver pretty much straight through. I think that you will especially enjoy it if you like silent films too.

I received a review copy of "Mask of Silver" by Rosemary Jones from Aconyte Press through SFRevu. A version of this review was posted there in January 2021. ( )

Somebody in Rosemary Jones's world loves silent films. Not only is "Mask of Silver" a good horror story, it is also film making primer on the glory days of films before talkies. I'm not a student of film so this was new territory for me and I enjoyed learning the many ways simple technology could be used to produce the effects that make these films great.

Prohibition is still the law of the land and racism is the norm. Chinese American Jenny Lin is the costume designer for filmmaker Sydney Fitzmaurice, who has dragged his company from Hollywood to his home town of Arkham, Massachusetts, to produce his new film in his family mansion. "Mask of Silver" will feature his star: Renee Love, and other members of his usual cast and crew, plus Max, the studio's bean counter.

Renee and Jenny share a secret. They are sisters, orphaned children of an illegal marriage between a white man and a Chinese woman, brought up together in Oakland, California. Renee is able to pass for white and when she took the train to Hollywood, Jenny came too and now poses as her dresser, travelling together and living near each other. They hide their relationship from everyone, including Sydney.

Arkham Horror, developed by Aconyte Books, is a series of set in and around Arkham, a medium sized city somewhere in Massachusetts near where it borders on Louisiana and West Virginia. Arkham is the home of Miskatonic University with its famous programs of ancient history, dead languages, and occult studies; a research library that houses one of the world's best collection of mystical arcana; and a noted museum of occult artifacts. Although cosmopolitan Massachusetts is only a train-ride away, not so far in the other direction is an impenetrable swamp and forest wilderness of dark hollers, murky hummocks, and people who don't venture out much.

The Fitzmaurice mansion is a house of mystery and death. It has burned once or twice consuming some if Sydney's ancestors alive. Yet the house is fully furnished right down to locked trunks in the attic. Creepy family portraits line the walls, and somehow the hallway mirrors reflect around corners.

This new film "Mask of Silver" is one of a string of Fitzmaurice horror masterpieces. Sydney wants it to be different enough to be exciting but still to contain some of his recognizable set pieces, especially the recurring figure of the masked man; masked in silver this time.

To keep things fresh, Sydney bring a new co-star up from Broadway, Lulu McIntyre, along with her lover, writer Eleanor Nash. Eleanor can help Sydney with the film script that is less a document than an idea that progresses along with the filming. Lulu has not worked in film before, and we learn along with her how it's done, as the camera cranks away.

Despite not having much of a script, Sydney is trying to keep to a tight schedule that inexplicably requires filming the final scene on the night of the summer solstice. There is no logical reason for it, but Sydney makes up some story about a family legend he wants to work into the plot. The cast and crew, who are growing more uneasy by the day, just want to finish the film and get away from the house as fast as possible.

This is a suspense story more than it is horror and we see it all through Jenny Lin's eyes. Jenny knows that Sydney is up to something. She knows the house is helping him. She knows that Renee is the pivot point and that the silver mask is evil. The suspense builds as recurring nightmares, inexplicable events, unlikely injuries, cast disappearances, and other accoutrements of horror tales start happening as the solstice approaches.

I read "Mask of Silver" pretty much straight through. I think that you will especially enjoy it if you like silent films too.

I received a review copy of "Mask of Silver" by Rosemary Jones from Anonyte Books through SFRevu.com. This review first appeared there in the June 2021 issue and can be read online. ( )

Mask of Silver is the first properly jauniste "Arkham Horror novel," which is to say: Of the now ten full novels (not counting the separate run of novellas) based on the Arkham Horror games, it is the first to center itself on the lore stemming from Robert W. Chambers' King in Yellow. According to Chambers' stories collected under the same title, The King in Yellow was a play which inculcated madness in its readers, and so it served as a model for Lovecraft's equally fictitious grimoire the Necronomicon.

There is none of Grandpa Cthulhu's Yog-Sothothery in this story, aside from the town of Arkham itself. The Necronomicon, Nyarlathotep, Shub-Niggurath, Mi-Go and the rest are entirely absent. There is one mere unconvinced mention "that alien entities colonized the South Pole" (286) from an unreliable secondhand source, alluding thus to "At the Mountains of Madness." The title of The King in Yellow is never mentioned, but the book brims with its tropes and characters: the sisters Camilla and Cassilda, the mask, the king, the cursed play. In this story, the play is serving as the basis for a silent film in the Hollywood studio system of 1923, with the cast and crew undertaking a location shoot in Arkham at the family manse of the auteur Sidney Fitzmaurice.

As with other Arkham Horror novels published in recent months by Aconyte, the player-character investigators of the games appear only in peripheral, supporting capacities--this time these include photo journalist Darrell Simmons, Ashcan Pete the drifter, and Pete's dog Duke. Agnes Baker's predecessor at Velma's Diner, the waitress Florie Wilson, plays an important role. The narrator of Mask of Silver is costume designer Jeany Lin, and there are a number of other vivid new characters introduced as members of the film company. Author Rosemary Jones has clearly done worthwhile research into the work of silent film production and the experience of Chinese-Americans in the early twentieth century.

Jones portrays Arkham as the site of a multigenerational struggle between male occultists (including Miskatonic scholars) with their alien sorceries and a network of women defenders of the quotidian community. The Californian "movie folk" are assimilated to both sides of this combat. As a costumier, Jeany is tasked with providing the important mask, and she only gradually becomes aware--in ways that most of the cast is not--that there is a menacing ceremony providing the narrative infrastructure of the "terror film."

With its theme of artistic creation and its slow and ominous build to a final catastrophe, this novel has more in common with The Last Ritual than it does with The Wrath of N'kai, to compare the other recent volumes in its series. (It is also close kin in flavor to the recent novella Dark Revelations.) But there is no direct continuity of plot or character with either, and except for its epilogue, this one is set earlier. It is a capable addition to the Arkham Horror franchise, but my main enjoyment of it related to its hypostasization of the mythos around The King in Yellow, which was quite effective.