Family secrets. High strangeness. Reality TV.
The Trenholm clan helped found Lower Congaree, South Carolina. Their land is cursed. Their abusive patriarch has croaked. Only heirs who attend the funeral will inherit.
But when Truluck Trenholm suffered his eventually-fatal stroke, oldest son Ash turned the haunted plantation into an enormously successful reality show-with all the attendant ethical issues of profiting off its legacy. Forced to tolerate the intrusion of California producers, grip guys, and cameras, toting a ton of childhood trauma, Ash’s brother and cousins have plenty of animosity for each other, along with a strong aversion to the paranormal shenanigans of their childhood home. But when Truluck’s funeral goes pear-shaped and the cousins are cut out of his will, Hollywood producers offer the deal of a lifetime: they’ll turn the Trenholms into witchy Kardashians with a Southern drawl.
If the cousins walk away, they’ll lose everything. But the farm’s high strangeness keeps getting stranger. Something’s happening on Cypress Bend. And filming might make it worse…
Combining the literary tradition of William Faulkner, Michael McDowell, and Octavia Butler with the shimmered lunacy of John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Elizabeth Broadbent’s Ninety-Eight Sabers is a Southern Gothic novel about a family determined to stick together as history threatens to tear them apart. This is a book that asks how we live with the past-and how we accept our responsibility for it in the present.
Dark bleatings, my entertained tribe! If you regularly read my reviews, I probably don’t have to tell you how excited I was to receive a novel from Elizabeth Broadbent, an author I’m coming to absolutely love. I’ve yet to merely like, rather than be obsessed with, any of her work. This novel was no different.
If you didn’t read the synopsis above, I’ll just tell you that this is about a family that own a very unique and creepy property. Ghosts that literally “ghost” people when they try to talk to them, possibly some alien phenomena, and discrepancies in time. The family’s history and heritage isn’t one that they’re all necessarily proud of, and we jump into their lives when they reassemble at the house for a funeral, only to end up contractually obligated to a reality TV show about them and their land.
Right from the first chapter, this story is packed with mystery and intrigue. What’s going on at this property and why does it seem to only affect this particular family? What is the family secret? Why would a TV network be interested in this – albeit very wealthy – family and their land? And why are their relationships with each other so fraught?
Broadbent is exceptional when it comes to characters and relationships, and this strength in her writing was really exemplified here. I was interested in absolutely everyone, because each member of this odd family is unique and packed with their own individual personality. Everyone has a different motivation for their behaviour, and these motivations are revealed in interesting and sometimes surprising ways.
It was the familial relationships I was most interested in, but there’s much more than that to sink your teeth into. There are really strange things going on in this place – a mixture of weird happenings that all at first feel like they’re from different subgenres. Things that you don’t normally see mixing together have been tossed into one big melting pot, but this only served to elevate my interest because Broadbent is also talented when it comes to setting things up for a greater pay off later, and I trusted her (quite rightly) to take me somewhere cohesive and satisfying.
If I have one complaint (and it really is just this one), it’s that I did find there were a few too many characters by the midway point. We start with the family initially, which in terms of number of characters, felt large going in. I was able to identify them all as I went along but I did realise I needed to focus for a little bit so as not to lose track. I did struggle a bit when even more characters entered the story.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I love Broadbent’s style and I think she’s developing a brand through her work and her choice of locations (and I love it!). I’d recommend this story to people who like the kind of horror that creeps up on you.
If you’d like to check out the book or the author, I’ve popped some links below for you:
Bleeeeeat!
Happy Goat Horror 
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