That Book With the Fantastic Cover Art: A Review of Robert Beatty's "Serafina and the Black

First of all, the cover is absolutely beautiful. Second of all, I actually enjoyed this story. Very often, I plunge into the pages of a popular novel and find myself unimpressed by its contents. But Robert Beatty has impressed me with the first novel in his Serafina series. Not only is he a good writer, but Beatty paints a fantastic backdrop for his story's heroine: 12-year-old Serafina, deformed, golden-eyed and nocturnal, a "creature of the night."

Set in the world of 1899 Asheville, North Carolina, Serafina and her father secretly live in the basement of the grand Biltmore Estate. Serafina's adoptive father, the estate's mechanic, cautions his daughter to never be seen by the Vanderbilts or their guests, and to never go into the deep parts of the forest. Up till now, Serafina has been diligent in obeying these two rules. She knows that she is not like most girls; she's wild and wiry, some of her bones are disconnected, her hair is a strange color and she has a grand total of four toes per foot. Serafina is Biltmore Estate's self-proclaimed "Chief Rat Catcher." At night she stalks the corridors of the mansion, extracting the rodents from their hideouts and returning them to their rightful place in the forest. But Serafina is not the only creature stalking the estate's corridors at night.

The violence and creepiness in Serafina and the Black Cloak are a bit more intense than you'd find in your average Middle Grade novel. The creature in the corridors is a man or demon clad in a black cloak--a cloak that reeks of death and "rotting guts" and decay. Serafina witnesses the Man in the Black Cloak stalk one of Biltmore's guests one night, a young girl, and absorb the child into his cloak. While the "absorption" is not in itself gruesome, Serafina describes the feeling of having her soul being yanked from her body. The Man in the Black Cloak is definitely a creepy villain, in his rattling cloak and with his lingering stench of death.

Additionally, when Serafina's adoptive father tells her the story of how he found her in the forest as a baby, he says that there was quite a bit of blood and that, in the blood "lay a pile of small creatures," three of which were dead. While he does not explicitly say "three dead human babies," he states that when he picked up the only creature still living, he realized it was a "tiny human baby curled into a little ball." Serafina was the only one of her litter to survive birth. While the writer does not dwell on this image, nor describe it in great detail, I found it disturbing. Later, there are descriptions of a bloody body, clawed and bitten after being attacked by a lion.

Besides the violence, the only other possibly objectionable point is that a couple of the relationships seemed very rushed. Serafina, who has never had a friend, nor even spoken to another child, quickly becomes attached to the Vanderbilt's 12-year-old nephew, Braeden. In one scene, the two hide in a carriage overnight, while stranded in the middle of the forest. They sleep up against one another, though the thought at first make Serafina uncomfortable, and Braeden appears "almost as nervous as she was to be crammed inside the carriage together, with nothing to do but look at each other in the darkness." Later, Serafina sneaks into Braeden's rooms at night, convinced that the Man in the Black Cloak will come for him. She sleeps on the floor, though later she and Braeden both fall asleep in the same bed. Though this could be viewed at purely innocent (the characters' thoughts certainly are), it is worth mentioning.

While the story was a mite predictable (I am proud to say that I had it figured out within the first three chapters), the plot and characters were definitely unique. Serafina and the Black Cloak is creative, magical, and at some points even humorous. Though at times the descriptions are bloody, they are nothing a 12+ reader could not handle. An enjoyable read, overall!