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Spoilers ahead so read at your peril:

I found it hard to finish this loooooong novel. I don't mind a long story if the characters and plot are compelling. This novel was just plain slow-moving and a sorry attempt at a Victorian with many avenues of unconnected storylines.

The story begins in the Carpathian mountains. There is a sphinx with glowing eyes and a mysterious gold box found in a cave that opens at dusk and closes at dawn. A sinister shadow escapes the box nightly to...I don't know! It was never completely explained.

The tale next veers off to London and an evil brother/sister team who own a match workhouse for the poor. This particular sequence, the bulk of the book , was just a pure and simple waste of time. I kept reading thinking we'd get back to the box which was barely mentioned at all the rest of the story. Oh, it does come up every now and then but without the mystery (or a satisfying explanation for its existence).

Finally, the Titanic becoming part of the story in the last 25% has been overused. It was so trite and frankly done better in other novels such as "Amanda/Miranda" that I was thinking... ho hum let's move on and finish this ASAP.

Try a well written Egyptian-themed novel like Anne Rice's "The Mummy". It may cost a little more but that is an excellent read. If you're looking for a better supernatural novel by Robert Masello try "Blood and Ice" but don't waste your money or time on this one.

52 people found this helpful

mys-reader

Terrific and fast-paced

September 20, 2018 - Published on Amazon.com

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I started this book as soon as I got it, and I read it all day, through a plane ride, and then well into the night. I've loved many of Robert Masello's books, and what distinguishes them from the usual genre fare is a gift for characters and a real literary flair. His writing is fluent and effective and surprising, and his plots, like this one, are absolutely ingenious. The real Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, is paired with a fictional heroine, Mina Harcourt, and together they embark on a harrowing mission through the darkest districts and most desolate workhouses of Victorian London. Think Charles Dickens meets Stephen King. The story is sometimes scary, sometimes moving, but always original and enthralling – right up to the final act that takes place on the ocean liner that was once thought unsinkable. He keeps many strands of plot and character going, and they are intricately and smartly interwoven. It’s a great book -- his best yet, I think --and I highly recommend it. He has an extraordinary talent for melding history and mystery and current story. Once you've read it, you'll want to get all his others, too.

25 people found this helpful

Shannon L. Gardner

This is a fantastic Victorian Gothic novel.

December 7, 2018 - Published on Amazon.com

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

This is a fantastic Victorian Gothic novel. I love the twists and turns throughout the book. You have some Egyptian mythology and black magic. You also then have some Victorian Theater, a couple murders, some deaths, some spiritualism and spiritualists, life after tragedy, some romance, Shakespeare and Bram Stokers Dracula. The play on words and names are very original, and very funny. Also all the traditional names in Dracula are given to other well deserved characters in this story. I love that the author use the word kerfuffle in a real sentence and hurly-burly. The Carpathian Sphinx, is not just a legend, is sits in the Carpathian mountains. It is not known who built it, it may have been created by a race of humans, long extinct who had fled to escape the Great Flood? Another thought is that it was built thousands of years ago by a lost tribe of Israel? The same Hebrew slaves who constructed the pyramids? No one may ever know who or how it was built but to know that it really exists is amazing. There is a very strange and odd relationship between the Thorne brother and sister. There are many secrets between the two of them, including but not only sacrilegious practices, murder, soul eating and finding the secret for long life. This was a fantastic book, I really love the characters, their backgrounds and story.

18 people found this helpful

Toni V. Sweeney

History and Supposition Make a Terrifying Read

October 14, 2018 - Published on Amazon.com

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

This is a very entertaining novel. Beginning with its setting in the Carpathians and the glimpse of the Sphinx of Bucegi (which I hadn't heard of and had to research and now wonder why it hasn't been used before in a thriller?) and proceeding through actual historical events ending with the sinking of the Titanic (undoubtedly the "night crossing" of the title), this is a novel that might've been penned by its main character himself. We get a great deal of background on Bram Stoker--his work for Henry Irving, his unhappy home life--making the author of Dracula something more than simply a man who wrote a novel whose antagonist has become more or less a household word. This story brings Stoker to life as a man seeking adventure and finding it in a story that is incorporated, according to this novel, into Dracula, but also might have been used as the theme for his Jewel of the Seven Stars. The Titanic's sinking is terrifyingly unyielding as it describes the panic and terror of the doomed passengers while Stoker, ill and fast approaching his own end, battles the villain of the piece.

Mr. Marsello's plot is straightforward but by no means slow. It moves at a rapid pace, and from the moment MIna Harcourt photographs the Sphinx and Bram attempts to talk a young woman out of leaping from a bridge into the river, there's nonstop tension as events bring these two people together.

Having also read the Jekyll Effect, I found its use of real people interplaying with fictional ones believable and as historically correct as possible in their portrayal. Because of this use of the actual and the fictitious, the story is thoroughly believable while unbelievable at the same time. For those who like the use of actual personages put into situations they might never expect in real life, this one will suit. For the supernatural/paranormal reader, it's a must.

This novel was purchased by me for my Kindle, and no remuneration was involved in the writing of this review.

18 people found this helpful