Over the weekend I quite happily consumed Cherie Priest's two Eden Moore stories: Four and Twenty Blackbirds and Wings to the Kingdom. (I just want to officially annoint Cherie right now as writer with the best titles ever. Her upcoming book is Not Flesh Nor Feathers and she also has the wonderful Dreadful Skin coming out right this moment. I think it will forever be the best werewolf book I ever read as you can tell from my recent review. All of these titles - every single one of them - just flat out rock.)

I don't know why it took me so long to discover Cherie's books. I did stumble across her live journal late last year and actually received the two Eden books for Christmas. I hadn't gotten around to reading them though until Subterranean Press dropped an ARC for Dreadful Skin on my doorstep and then I was eager for everything she had written. I'm sure (absolutely sure) that her books would appeal to anyone with a weakness for creepy southern gothic style, (fans of Caitlin Kiernan's Alabaster take note), but as someone who grew up in the south (Florida anyway) and has taken more than one class on the Civil War, well, the Eden Moore books were pretty much tailor made for me. (Throw in my insane amount of knowledge for every Clint Eastwood western and you will understand why I loved Dreadful Skin so much as well.) When Eden ended up driving into St Augustine in Blackbirds I knew that I had found one of my literary soulmates. I've been to St Augustine - I know all about how haunted that town is and that truly brilliant southern gothic writers would be fools - FOOLS! - to ignore all the natural homegrown creepiness that it has to offer. (I also know it was the oldest European settlement in the US and doesn't get nearly the amount of respect that those Jamestown dweebs always do. No one has ever been able to explain why it this way to me however.)

I love St Augustine - the view from the fort, the carriage tours, the total ickiness with a strong dose of tackiness that is Ripley's Believe it or Not. I love the old city and how the tour guides always tell you that it's haunted and I just loved that Cherie dropped her characters right down into it. It proved that she knows more about the south than the obvious - then what anybody might know. She knows Chattanooga (and Chickamauga), she knows St. Augustine (and that more of the state is swamp than most people would believe) and she knows that most people think that Georgia exists just to get to Florida (we're just being honest here people).

Basically she knows her southern shit.

Adrienne wrote a pretty good column last month about why Blackbirds is so great. I don't really agree with her take on the second book, Wings to the Kingdom however. It is not as scary as Blackbirds, but it's more the book where Eden starts to figure things out, and has a chance to care about something beyond herself - which in this case is a bunch of Civil War soldiers who really need someone to ride to the rescue. What got me in Wings was the language; it seemed like Cherie really had time to sit back and play with some truly evocative language this time. She had a chance to make a battlefield real and powerful and make Eden far more than just another chick who sees dead people. Here's a great part near the end:

And everywhere around the valley, parents tell warning tales about him again. They frighten their young ones by dropping their voices and waving their fingers as they talk about the giant monster who walks the fields at night.

And if she's any kid of mine, I expect she'll understand.

I loved the soldiers in Wings, and Eden's quirky friends and that Cherie managed to work another insane asylum into the plot. (Gotta love the south and its surplus of crazies.) I also liked that while Eden figures out the weirdness that is her life she gets to live with her aunt and uncle and slowly make her way - there's no get your act together and go out and save the world business. Eden has a gift - or a curse - and I love that it's not all sorted out overnight. I liked the messiness in this book - honestly it reminded me a bit of what happened with The Empire Strikes Back. This is the book where the characters start to sort themselves out. There are adventures, but a big part of the plot is Eden just reflecting on who she is which is pretty darn necessary considering what's going on in her life. Wings is the book where southern style Buffy accepts that she's the Slayer and gets to slaying - except there are no vampires and lots of sad dead Confederate soldiers and it's more talking than staking. But still, I thought it was great and loved it from beginning to end. But then again, for all my time in Alaska, I'm still a bit of a southern girl at heart. I know the people in these books - I know them. And it was pure pleasure reading the words of another southern girl who gets that world the way that I do.