Review - Living With Ghosts by Kari Sperring (DAW)

Living With Ghosts by Kari Sperring
Published by DAW
Paperback - 496 pages
Published March 2009
Review copy given by author

Living With Ghosts is a supernatural dark fantasy set in the city of Merafi -  a city that thrives by its rivers and the tides of its twin moons. It is in this city that ancient magics threaten to consume the city and everyone within. Aristocrat Thiercelin has seen the ghost of his long dead friend Valdarrian, and seeks out Gracielis, a foreign courtesan with a gift for seeing the paranormal, for help. Soon they are pulled into a dangerous game involving blood pacts, plague, ancient magic ... and the ghosts of the past returning to destroy the city. Living with Ghosts appeared on the British Fantasy Society Award Longlist for Best Novel.

One of the most immediate and brilliant things about Living With Ghosts is Sperring's ability to capture the dark atmosphere of the city and its characters. Sensation plays a massive role throughout the narrative, where in many cases characters feel things as opposed to knowing or experiencing them directly. This makes the story incredibly immersive and you are able to experience things with the characters as opposed to watching them from a distance. It is this ability to draw the reader in through these sensations that is the strongest part of the story.

However, it does feel that this is taken to an extreme on several occasions, and the prose becomes convoluted and 'flowery'. In these instances, it seems that an attempt is made to be more poetic and enigmatic in order to further convey the atmosphere. Unfortunately, you can have too much of a good thing and these sections detract from the narrative and can be quite jarring.

Owing to the deep atmosphere that pulls the reader into the world that Sperring has created, her characters as an integral part of that world are both interesting and believable. The stressed relationship between Thiercelin and his wife Yvaine, the emotional confusion that comes from Thiercelin's dealings with Gracielis, the different levels of relations between the major characters and the late Valdarrian - all of these emotions and interconnecting relationships have a great impact on the reader and not only do they understand where each character is coming from, but they empathise with them entirely.

The pace of Living With Ghosts was unusual, in that the main antagonist has done their dirty work half way through the story, and the other half is devoted entirely to the aftermath of said dirty work. True, this aftermath has a snowball effect that leads to potential catastrophe, but it was odd that the antagonist's hand had been revealed so early on. Though I found it a pleasant change from the usual 'not knowing what the villain is up to until the last but one chapter', I felt that the bulk of the story was finished far earlier than was intended, and the rest was involved with character development. I think the antagonist could have had a greater part to play (their character was the most underdeveloped, I felt) and so this would have enabled to have the payoff later on in the story, giving the reader more time to immerse themselves deeper in her world.

In conclusion, Living With Ghosts is a great read that, much like the river in the story, pulls you in and refuses to let go. Whilst the bouts of overly poetic prose and strange pace may hinder the story, it does so only slightly. What you get out of Living With Ghosts is a brilliantly atmospheric novel with complex yet understandable characters and a dark setting filled with sensation. A recommended read for those with a taste for something a little different.