🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑
When her dad has to leave to pick up her step-mother from an unstable political occurrence, Lacey knows it’s time to explore the mansion. Strange noises have been emanating from the third floor – and neither she, nor Cal are buying the butler’s explanation that it’s a furnace. The girls trick the butler into leaving the house, and they head up to investigate the strange sounds. What they find defies belief, and they accidentally set free a bunch of monsters (Grincubs, amongst them) who trash the mansion, and suave, slimy guy named Lord Sharp – who deals with exterminating creatures from beyond the veil (who gave me extremely strong Betelgeuse vibes).
Lacey, at first, was extremely unlikable. She was a spoilt brat with a very strong entitlement aura about her. She would be consistently mean to her step-sister, referring to her as brainiac at best. When her father left the mansion to rescue her stepmother, she refused to call Cal her sister, resulting in her and her dad parting on bad terms. She was manipulative towards Cal, coercing her into investigating the strange noises coming from the third floor. What was nice (although not unexpected) was Lacey’s development. As the two of them traversed the dangers of the Neitherswarth, she begins to see Cal in a different light; her feelings towards the younger girl shifting to be more familial.
Other than the obvious likeness of Sharp to that famous black and white striped undead ‘bio-exorcist’, Lord Sharp also appears to the girls via modern technology and also has an incredibly high opinion of himself. There’s also a snake-like monster which resembles the sandworm (in my imagination, at least) and the aforementioned Grincubs, who have a distinct resemblance to some snarky creatures who don’t like bright sunlight and multiply in water. Even the the butler, Mr Adger, reminded me of a character I’d once read in a Point Horror book as a teenager.
Although the story itself is original – as in, the Neitherswarth – too many of the plot points were clearly melded together from some other story. It would have been much better had DuRona used more of his own plot lines and made up his own monsters, instead of borrowing some from Tim Burton, Chris Columbus and RL Stein and making a mashup of them.
S. A.
First published on Reedsy Discovery as part of their ARC program. You can read the original review here.
You can buy The Berge Sisters Tour the Neitherswarth on Amazon by.clicking on it’s name.