Review: The Ancestor

2 stars. Oh dear, I hate to say it: I thought this was kind of lame. A great premise - and there's definitely an audience for this sort of thing - but not for me. It kind of felt like a monster-of-the-week episode of X-Files or Supernatural with a little extra padding. There were elements of a scientific or anthropological thriller, like something from Michael Crichton or Dan Brown, and elements of a gothic horror novel, but nothing came together successfully. This is just a really strange book, start to finish.

Our heroine is Alberta, who is whisked away to Italy after discovering that she is the last heir to the estate of an ancient European noble family. She is told this by a handsome and lawyerly visitor, who promptly disappears from the story completely along with her estranged husband. Upon arriving at her isolated castle in the mountains, Alberta realizes there's more to this inheritance than money and legal documents: the household staff seems kind of secretive and hostile, there are rumors of a family curse, and maybe at one point there was some sort of beast wandering around stealing children from the village. Some of her relatives are alive, BTW. And she can't leave?

It just... gets even more ridiculous from there. And sure, ridiculous isn't necessarily bad. Ridiculous can be fun, and campy, and gripping. This was just strange. A lot of my eye-rolling was in reaction to the character of Alberta herself - I couldn't relate to her at all. Sure, I can't relate to every single protagonist I've ever read, but this girl would literally run dramatically from the least dramatic situations, and somehow things like murder, kidnapping, and being shot not only didn't really phase her - she found ways to justify and accept them. Very odd.

But the story itself - I think in the name of found family (one of my favorite themes) - also does some bizarre sidestepping, around incest and self-isolation and infliction of harm. There are stunning, boggling displays of self-righteousness and colonialist mindset, and some of the plot developments are really ... random. Not that books need to follow traditional narrative arcs, but any chance of emotional investment was destroyed pretty early on, so every "twist" got kind of a "huh" from me. I have to mention I'm still a little unclear about the antagonists here (like the who, the what, the why). 

The latest wave of hand wringing over reviews and Goodreads and reader response has hit the shore, so once again I'd like to declare: I've never written a book. It seems really hard. I'd be terrible at it. Also, this "review" is not professional, nor is it meant for the author or anyone who worked on the publication of this book. Just my thoughts, just my reaction to it. So if you're a prospective reader, just do your homework. Maybe you'll love it! Maybe you'll find this book spooky and surprising and satisfying. I did not.

The Ancestor on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads