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Tanya Huff knows her haunted houses, and that's what makes SMOKE AND MIRRORS so deliciously creepy. The actors of Darkest Night (a pastiche of Dark Shadows) are filming a haunted house episode in Caulfield House, an ancient mansion that has three great attractions -- a brooding look, a murderous past, and a dirt-cheap price tag. Only one member of the crew, Tony Foster, has enough magical power to know that there is more to the supernatural evil than plastic fangs and strawberry bloodstains, so he's the only one to notice the oddities creeping into the filming. The sound of the baby crying. The images in the mirror. The extra extras in the cast. But then someone falls and skins her knee, bleeding for real and awakening more than just memories. Caulfield House has fed on blood for decades, trapping the ghosts of its victims into constantly replaying their own gruesome deaths. As darkness falls outside, the doors slam shut as Caulfield prepares to feast again. It's a pretty basic horror plot, but what makes SMOKE AND MIRRORS stand out is Huff's dark humor. Inside the house, the writers start complaining as only writers will. "'Didn't we do the eyes thing in episode six and again in episode eleven?' 'Cliche,' Sorge agreed." While outside the house, the caretaker is freaking out because he hasn't scared anybody with his stories of ghosts and vengeance. "Haunted houses. Malevolent things. You should be in deep denial." But this isn't to say that Huff doesn't bring the terror. No book has horrified me as much as she did with a single sentence: "[It was] light enough to see the baby burning on the hearth." This is the second book in the Smoke series, itself a spinoff of Huff's 1990s Blood series. Henry Fitzroy of the Blood book has a small part, but here the hero is Tony Foster, a fledgling wizard and gay production assistant. There is one passing mention to Tony's appearance in the Blood books and numerous references to the events in SMOKE AND SHADOWS, but enough information is given to make SMOKE AND MIRRORS count as a stand-alone book. But you won't want to stand alone as you read it -- you're either going to want to share the jokes or have someone hold you while you shiver.
Reviewed by Linnea Dodson, November 2005
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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