Four and Twenty Blackbirds

Four and Twenty Blackbirds
Cherie Priest
Tor
ISBN: 0-765-31308
Fiction, Fantasy, Ghost Story, Southern Gothic
Reviewed by Chris Gerrib

I just finished reading Cherie Priest’s debut novel, Four and Twenty Blackbirds. You should know that Cherie hangs out with the science fiction guys (John Scalzi, my favorite SF writer, called her “everything you could want in a carbon-based lifeform”) but Four and Twenty Blackbirds is a Southern-fried Gothic ghost story.
The novel stars Eden Moore, a fairly ordinary black girl growing up in Chattanooga, Tennessee during the past few decades. Eden’s an orphan, being raised by her aunt, and she sees ghosts. Three of them to be precise, and they are apparently her ancestors. She also has a white cousin that, every fifteen years or so, tries to kill her. Other then that, she’s just an ordinary girl.
The second time her cousin tries to kill her, in the process putting a bullet into a friend at a bar, Eden decides to figure out her family history. She starts with the logical point, figuring out what her cousin has against her. Eden figures that the ghosts she sees are harmless, and have nothing to do with her real-world problems. This wouldn’t be a ghost story if she was correct.
Cherie Priest, born and raised in Chattanooga, fills her story with the sort of lovely local detail that just pops out of the page. Her characters are entertaining and believably flawed, and act for (to them) rational reasons. If you’ve got some Xmas gift money burning a hole in your pocket, you could do much, MUCH worse then to buy this book.