Romantic Times: Priest continues to be an effective crafter of dread and tension, and while Jacaranda is explicitly a novella, there are a few areas where the reader might wish for more. Despite being set in her Clockwork Century universe, aside from a few background touches, this could easily take place in any version of the Old West, and the book seems to be building to something bigger than it ultimately winds up being. The characters here are vivid and interesting enough that hopefully this particular adventure isn’t the last of we hear of them, or of the survivors at least.
Just off the coast of Texas, on the island of Galveston, there’s a hotel named the Jacaranda. It would be the nicest resort in the area, if not for the fact that everyone who comes there is dying one by one. Now, a priest with a bloody past, a nun with a bloody secret and an old Texas Ranger who specializes in the odd and uncanny have all come to the Jacaranda to put whatever hungers there to rest — or die trying.