The trees are turning red and orange and it couldn’t be setting up for a more perfect autumn, and Halloween is only a week away. If you’re looking for a ghost story to get you into the mood of the season, check out borg.com writer Elizabeth C. Bunce’s novel A Curse Dark as Gold, available in hardcover, paperback, audio, and E-book editions from Amazon.com and other booksellers, first reviewed here back in 2011.
A Curse Dark as Gold is set in the Gold Valley in that far away land where fairy tales reside. Charlotte Miller is a girl in her late teens whose father dies and leaves her the town of Shearings’s woolen mill, which serves as workplace for most of her community, along with the care of Charlotte’s younger sister Rosie. Unwanted responsibilities fall into the lap of this young woman from page one. From a framework standpoint A Curse Dark as Gold is a spin on Rumpelstiltskin-type helper tales of the past, but this story takes on its own life. Shearing is at once lovely and pastoral, yet dark and creepy doings begin to permeate the corners of the town. A mysterious uncle arrives and begins to interject himself into the girls’ lives, pecking away at their sanity. As if sick itself, the mill begins to respond to the death of Charlotte’s father, with boards crashing down, textile machines failing, and the fabric of Shearing seeming to unravel.
The story is set at the dawn of an Industrial Revolution. Water wheels are about to be replaced with steam power and the smoke-filled cities that come along with that new technology. Charlotte quickly finds she has inherited her father’s acumen as a savvy businessperson, yet real life pressures including competition from big city wool firms, and unfair attempts to squeeze Shearing’s mill out of the marketplace, cause the mill to lose its workers. The economic issues are only the beginning of Charlotte’s problems. A strange neighbor lady is a follower of old world ways, superstitions and magic, and Rosie attempts to fix things by dabbling in this world. Charlotte, a non-believer, weighs her options and soon a helper appears with an impractical but decisive solution. Charlotte makes a bargain with this man and Shearing is safe for a time, but as more problems hit the town and the stakes are raised, Charlotte is left to make further bargains, and one, last unthinkable deal that could prove to be her undoing. Charlotte is steadfast and stubborn, relying only upon her own intuition she turns away from everyone near her, including sister Rosie and her new husband.
The rustle of the wind, the creaks of the mill building, the thump of the belts on the mill wheel, all come alive. Thoroughly creepy images of the mysterious stranger manipulating Charlotte’s uncle will stick with you long after you’re done reading. And at the heart of the novel is a dark ghost story, that will force you to decide whether Charlotte’s mill really is cursed. Elizabeth’s exquisite prose, and the determined and believable voice of narrator Charlotte, will leave you believing you didn’t pull a work from 2008 off the bookshelf, but a classic work written in the 1800s. You will be hard-pressed to find another book that will better get you in the mood for the coming holiday and its hauntings. The audio book
A Curse Dark as Gold
C.J. Bunce
Editor
borg.com
joins 2011’s 
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about the nation of Welce, where every citizen feels a kinship to one of the five elements, thanks in part to random blessings drawn by strangers at their birth. The sweela are drawn to the element of fire, and 
, etc.), to her Twelve Houses high fantasies (
, etc.), to the recent urban fantasy Shifting Circle novels (
, etc.), Shinn’s series consist of separate standalone stories linked by characters and worldbuilding—not one-long-novel-in-five-parts, although there may be an overarching series plot, as well. But it’s her worldbuilding that makes Shinn such a standout fantasy series writer. The worlds are rich, deep, unique, and immediately accessible. Shinn has said that Elemental Blessings was originally planned as a single book, but it was so obviously destined from its conception to be a classic Shinn five-volume series (we hope and assume!). Like many of Shinn’s worlds, Welce has a special sort of magic tied to the land within its borders. Not only do Welchins identify with the elements (the elay relate to air; the coru to water; the hunti to wood; and the torz to earth), but some possess an even stronger connection, sensing and even manipulating the elements around (and sometimes even within) them.
