House of Brutes and Angels

I received a copy of this from NetGalley and this is my freely given opinion.

This is the continuation of the book Dunmoor, and is told from two part. At the end of Dunmoor, Helena and Luke find out that her husband, Lord Drake Winters, may not be dead. Luke and Helena, his cousin, the staff at Dunmoor, and the children had been through a grueling traumatic experiences while there, including death, hauntings, curses, and fire and were denied their happily ever after with this knowledge and that was where we were left. I loved the lush, gothic feel of Dunmoor, but hated the cliffhanger ending...

Which leads use to the House of Brutes and Angels. This is a continuation of the story of Dunmoor and it's history, rather than a story of Helena and Luke. They are a part of this story, but the central focus is not about them. The setting is still Dunmoor at the focus, as the place of the curse, and the place that keeps drawing the characters back, but not as omnipresent as in the first book.

This story is told from two other perspectives. Alex is Luke's cousin, and who helped him with his Dunmoor project. He is living in the region, to help with the renovations around Dunmoor and the new orphanage, especially as Luke is off nursing a broken heart, and trying to help Helena with her ill father, even though they cannot marry as they intended, as Winters is still alive. In the meantime, he has retrieved Arabella, the daughter of his dead lover, Lady Persephone, as he promised her. Arabella is an eerie child, with clairvoyant abilities, and a spine-chilling ability to see the future about deaths. Alex does not know what to do with her, how to relate to her, and she just creeps him out. He hires on Violet to be her governess; she was previously hired on at Dunmoor before the fire. Initially, she was reluctant to, as she is arranged to marry Jasper, who essentially won her from her wastrel father in a card game. She had put him off and he is getting impatient, but she agrees to work for Alex for a short while, putting the increasingly impatient Jasper off further.

Augusta was introduced in the first book as Drake Winter's half sister and it was revealed that she and Drake were in an incestuous relationship when Helena found their journal and communications revealing their abusive history and their co-dependent relationship. In this book, we meet Augusta and Drake and gain her perspective of their history and relationship as well.

Everyone is ultimately drawn back to Dunmoor as the curse still exists and the sect that worships it's demons and the curse has not been killed off, and Augusta, Drake, Arabella, Violet, Alex, Jasper, etc are all inexorably drawn or linked to the lands and it's curse.

This is another lush, over the top, but fascinating gothic, with an actual denouement to the story this time, rather than another cliff hanger (thank you!! If this ended in another cliffhanger I likely would have just ended up mad and frustrated!). But there is a lot to take in - there is the angel of death, a clairvoyant eerie child who sees ghosts and death, there are still the Dunmoor demons, including the watery women, the tree demons, the ghostly children. There are ghosts haunting Alex, and Augusta. There is kidnapping. The search for a cursed relic. Incestuous lovers, and the wings of death.

I did not find it as compelling or as lushly graphic overall as Dunmoor, but it was very close. I wanted very much to find out what happens to Helena, Luke, Augusta, Alex, Drake, Arabella, and Violet, and was given a relatively satisfactory ending. Thoroughly enjoyable.

4 stars out of 5