Blood Roots by Richie Tankersley Cusick

 

BLOOD ROOTS was an impulse buy for me because I've read and really liked Richie Tankersley Cusick's Point Horror novels. This book-- this book is quite another type of beast. First, people are shelving it as young adult-- a danger whenever a YA author branches out into genre fiction. This is NOT YA. It is an incredibly disturbing, genre-defying book that I would probably classify as erotic horror. It's a haunted house story, a doomed family story, and a coming of age story, wrapped in the rotted, maggot-crawling shroud of a crumbling Southern Gothic. The best way of describing it, I think, would be saying that it's like a cross between Tanith Lee's DARK DANCE and Amy Engel's ROANOKE GIRLS.

The plot is deceptively simple. Olivia returns to her family's Louisiana mansion after the death of her crazy mother. But once she gets to the mansion, she's creeped out and has second thoughts. Too bad that the cab driver is a jerk and drives away, with her purse and wallet no less, leaving her there with literally nothing but the clothes on her back. Once inside, she meets the family matriarch, Miss Rose, an uncomfortable matronly Black servant stereotype named Yoly, an evil Black voodoo seductress stereotype named Mathilde, and two guys named Jesse and Skyler. Skyler is a cruel and sadistic rake, whereas Jesse plays the role of the consummate gentleman.

Instinct warns her not to tell them who she is, so she pretends that she was just an innocent tourist who was taken advantage of by an unscrupulous cab driver. She gets a job as a servant and does light housework while exploring the grounds, and I literally cannot convey to you how brilliantly done the swampy, claustrophobic backdrop of the house is, and how utterly smothering it makes the story. The stereotypes date the book, but I did kind of wonder if it was meant to be a parodying homage. Even if it wasn't, it certainly reads that way, replete with all of the melodrama that made Cusick such a popular teen horror author. This is honestly my favorite type of horror-- the kind that's psychological and leaves most of the real horrors to the reader's imagination. I think this is a keeper. Just don't get it for your kid.

4.5 out of 5 stars