by Cherie Priest
This is a fun book. The story is a classic one about there is something horrible in our family's past that no one will talk about so the protagonist is required to search out the mystery for them self. Of course this leads to problems all the way around until we come to a rather satisfying ending that could have been achieved with much less pain if people didn't act so stupidly in the first place.
Even with a kind of cliche format Four and Twenty Blackbirds was just what I wanted to read when I found it. The mystery was not deep and you took comfort in the fact that you could figure it out before the turn in the story. At the same time it was not so obvious that we disliked the character for now knowing what was about to happen. The dialog was good, something I have missed in other novels I have recently read, and characters were believable.
I really like historical fiction and I was kind of hoping this story was based a little on it. I did a little research, but did not find any reference to occult groups referenced in the book, and the sorko is the name of a people who live in Chad and Niger and not in reference to a person with specific powers. The description of St. Augustine are very vivid though and having visited there a few times in the past I enjoyed them.
The only complaint I have about this book is the point of view. Most of this book is in first person limited point of view. Not my favorite, but it works pretty well in this story. Every once in a while we jump to third person limited for one sentence durations that do not add to the story. I found this kind of jolting and the fact that the information did not advance or enhance the story I felt this should have been flagged by an editor as some point in the process.