There is a world that mixes Victorian
and medieval sensibilities and style, sorcery and science, the mythical and the
mundane…
When Brigida de Marfil finds a young
gentleman beaten unconscious outside the grounds of the traveling Moundshroud
Carnival, she and the other members of the carnival take him in and nurse him
back to health. Though the young man—who calls himself Mr. Samuel Byron—is
courteous and gentle, Brigida knows there's more to him than meets the eye. The
roiling mass of darkness posing as his aura is the first clue; the Grim Reaper
visage that covered his face when he stopped some drunken audience members from
harassing her is another. Whatever he is, Sam has a mission at the Moundshroud
Carnival, and Brigida is determined to figure out what it is.
Samuel Byron is no ordinary gentleman of
means. He is actually Baron Samedi, a ghede—a prince from the royal family of Haitian
death-masters, immortal vodouists with mastery over the dead, dying, and
diseased—and he's on the trail of his younger brother and the men who have
persuaded him to use the ghede death-magic for evil: Ernest Frankenstein,
younger brother of a late and infamous European scientist; and the cruelly
beautiful Lord Dorian Gray, who seeks the key to eternal life. Samuel knows
these men mean to trick Loraj into mingling death-magic with mortal science to
unlock the secrets of immortality and ultimate power of life and death. If Samuel
doesn't stop his brother in time, innocent humans could die, and the Ghede
royal family will put a stop to Loraj once and for all—by any means necessary.
Torn between protecting his misguided
younger brother and stopping Frankenstein and Gray, Samuel finds himself in
need of Brigida's help…because Brigida is no ordinary carnival aerialist. The
daughter of a Spanish witch and a flesh-eating wendigo—with some fairly
powerful magic in her blood, a ravenous darkness burning inside her, and a tame
chupacabra as her familiar—Brigida is more than equal to the task of helping
Samuel stop Gray, Frankenstein, and their growing army of undead monstrosities.
It's Haitian vodoun and Spanish witchcraft against unnatural science; and with
the help of the other "unique" individuals of the Moundshroud
Carnival, Samuel might just stand a chance of getting through all of this
alive.
As long as the ghede royal family never
finds out about Brigida and the carnival.
