Neva's goals at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago are simple. Enjoy the spectacle—perhaps the greatest the United States has ever put on (the world’s fair to end all world’s fairs!). Perform in the exposition’s Algerian Theatre to the best of her abilities. And don't be found out as a witch.
Easy enough … until the morning she looks up in the theatre and sees strangely marked insects swarming a severed hand in the rafters. Before she can scream, the bugs drop and swarm her. And every one of them seems to have a stinger.
They strike fast—it only takes them a moment to inject her with so much venom that the same strange marks begin to rise on her skin. She's horrified, but there's worse to come: once the insects disperse, a Columbian Guard notices her rashes and warns that five people with similar sores have been murdered and dismembered. Before they died, the victims also seem to have lost their minds.
Neva considers fleeing the exposition. But that won't stop her from going mad. So she marshals her powers and searches for the killer. Soon enough, it becomes clear he's searching for her too.
This is truly a blend of real life events, alternate history fiction, fantasy fiction with a splash of the supernatural. If this is your genre, you will love this.!
I will admit that, personally, I guess I am a bit of an old-school fantasy fiction reader (Mists of Avalon, Lord of the Rings, etc), and my only real alternate history outing was a poorly done book about Anne Boleyn and a rather good one from Colin Taber on the Viking settlement of the US. So it was with a little bit of trepidation that I agreed to give this a go when offered by the author, Nick Wisseman.
The premise certainly was intriguing - being a non-US resident, I was not familiar with the names given to these "expos" - so that alone sent me scurrying away to do some more reading. I was delighted to know that this was a real event!
In 1893, an expo (or exposition) was held in Chicago in 1893 - ostensibly to celebrate Columbus' arrival 400 years previous. Here's me thinking it was an expo on actual Columbian culture! Anyway, from my additional reading, the setting is Wisseman's novel really taps into this event, and the events that occurred slightly before and after.
The Columbian Exposition covered 690 acres, made up on nearly 200 temporary neoclassical style buildings, canals and lagoons. The facade of every building was draped in white, giving rise to it's name - the white city. Artists and musicians, and people and cultures from 46 countries were featured in exhibits and many also made depictions and works of art inspired by the exposition. The expo ran for six months - May to October.
There were many "firsts" featured at this expo - the ferris wheel, electricity (which powered the event), the edison kinetoscope, morse code, the travelator and the telegram.
So, was there really a serial killer stalking the exposition grounds. Well, yes and no. Around this time lived a rather odd fellow called HH Holmes, who, it is speculated, may have killed as many as 200 people, in his "hotel" situated about three miles away from the expo. It is said he began construction of this hotel about ten years prior and may have begun his killings in the few years leading up to the expo - he is reported to have left Chicago about a year later when questions began to be asked about not only missing persons but from supplied about unpaid bills.
It is a slow build as the storyline unfolds, with multiple protagonists, each with their own agenda, who both help and hinder Neva (our heroine) in her quest to battle this supernatural enemy before she too, becomes one of its many victims. Throughout it all are the parallel (and challenging) themes of inequality, racism, political and social change, new ideas (including spiritualism) and concepts.
However, the Columbian Exposition was a mirage, an illusion, a temporary idyll - "Chicago changed its spots for a time, but not for long" and "when the mask comes off, everyone is laid bare" - how very apt. For after the exposition's closure and subsequent fire, the idle smokestacks were fired up once again, blanketing the city in a perpetual grey cloak of fog that hid much from view.
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