Review by Booklist Review
A miraculum, says the dictionary, is "a miracle; a divine act." There's nothing heavenly, however, about a traveling carnival called Pontilliar's Spectacular Star Light Miraculum. It's 1922, summer in the sweaty Southwest, and, despite its inflated name, the Miraculum may be the seediest carnival ever. As the narrative begins, things are about to go haywire. The show's geek, the fellow who bites the heads off live chickens, hangs himself for reasons that aren't clear to him: "He only knew that he must." An applicant for the job suddenly appears literally out of nowhere and readers are cued right away that something is off. Tattooed Ruby, the carnival's snake charmer and daughter of the owner, senses trouble, and the clash between her and the new geek, far too well dressed for his job, is the eventual point of the novel. It's a long time coming, though, but readers will content themselves with Post's rich, atmospheric prose and displays of dark magic while they wait. Ruby has strange powers of her own, and the ending, with animal howls of rage, is all the more effective for the suddenly understated prose.--Don Crinklaw Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this underwhelming novel from Post (Lightwood) a circus hires on a mysterious stranger and soon finds itself suffering from a string of unexplained tragedies. Touring the Louisiana-Texas border in 1922, Pontilliar's Spectacular Star Light Miraculum is made up of a rough crowd of outcasts and runaways, everyone holding secrets and grudges against one another. When the geek-a member of the show who bites off the heads of small animals-is found dead from an apparent suicide by hanging, a well-dressed man named Daniel shows up out of nowhere and offers to take his place. But Ruby, a snake charmer and the daughter of the circus owner, has a feeling Daniel is hiding something sinister. While the circus atmosphere Post creates is one of danger and intrigue, there's little actual mystery to be found here. The story moves too quickly, leaving the characters underdeveloped and their motivations unclear. Twists are also telegraphed in advance through jumps in perspective that often make the story hard to follow. Both too rakish and supernatural to be believable, Daniel maintains an uncanny effect on all those around him from his introduction until the novel's predictable end. Despite the rich setting and strong concept, Post's story of a macabre travelling spectacular fails to captivate. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
This Southern gothic tale follows a bedraggled carnival as it limps through the Deep South.It's 1922, and Pontilliar's Spectacular Star Light Miraculum has been "on its last legs for the past fifteen years." The carnival has a wonderfully odd collection of freaks for public amazement, including a man with a third leg and a geek who bites the heads off chickens. Trouble begins when the geek inexplicably hangs himselfyou'd think a geek would have everything to live forand a handsome, well-dressed stranger named Daniel presents himself to Pontilliar as the "new glomming geek." Protagonist Ruby Chole is Pontilliar's daughter, a sympathetic character who is tattooed from head to toe and plays the snake charmer, Esmeralda the Enchantress. Ruby senses something sinister about Daniel even before the second terrible incident: Daniel challenges gambling addict Tom Given to a dice game of Dead Man All In and wins Tom's beautiful girlfriend, January, who seems to have no say in the matter. Tom then horrifies his carnival colleagues by falling to his death from a Ferris wheel. Among the carnival workers, "There were whispers of madness. And of murderers." Ruby suspects that Daniel has killed both menor caused them to die. But no one is prepared for the further havoc that befalls the carnival. Daniel reveals himself to the reader as being other than humanas a god, in fact. The "hell-sent geek" has lived as a trickster for countless centuries and is delighted whenever he can cause disasters. In the end, Ruby must find a way to deal with himshe can't kill him, so she had better come up with a trick of her own. This is a tale brimming with imagination and rich in melancholy as it pits the natural against the supernatural and touches on what it means to be human.Great fare for fans of gothic fiction or simply good storytelling. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.