My Brother's Keeper

By: Tim Powers

Narrated by: Kristin Atherton

THE TRUE STORY OF THE BRONTË SISTERS AS ONLY TIM POWERS COULD WRITE IT.

This is a ghost story. It is a story about werewolves, and things that go bump in the night. It is a story of an ill-fated land, the pathless moors of Northern England so well chronicled in Wuthering Heights. And it is the story of a real family whose destiny it is to deal with this darkly glamorous and dangerous world.

When young Emily Brontë helps a wounded man she finds at the foot of an ancient pagan shrine in the remote Yorkshire moors, her life becomes contentiously entwined with his. He is Alcuin Curzon, embittered member of a sect working to eradicate the resurgent plague of lycanthropy in Europe and northern England.

But Emily's father, curate of the Haworth village church, is responsible for having unwittingly brought a demonic werewolf god to Yorkshire forty years ago—and it is taking possession of Emily's beloved but foolish and dissolute brother. Curzon must regard Emily's family as a dire threat.

In spite of being at deadly odds, Emily and Curzon find themselves thrown together in fighting werewolves, confronting pagan gods, even saving each other from the lures of moorland demons. And in a final battle that sweeps from the haunted village of Haworth to a monstrous shrine far out on the moors, the two of them must be reluctant allies against an ancient power that seems likely to take their souls as well as their lives.

©2023 Tim Powers (P)2023 Head of Zeus

Thank you, Tim. I needed this.

Unmistakably a Tim Powers work, unfolding a story of stunning matter-of-fact spirit and talent. love and loyalty that never wavers.

Feels Real

Powers' mastery of historical details and the wonderful voices that he gives his characters sets this paranormal tale apart. The paranormal elements are never stereotypical, operating on their own rules, Brilliant story.

Vicious Fun with a Strong Female Lead

Emily Brontë is a killer protagonist in this lycanthropic thriller, and supported by an enthralling lot of characters. I particularly enjoyed the narrator’s accents and goulish voices to rival Andy Serkis’ Gollum. Tim Powers proves again that he is the master of supernatural historical fiction.

Incredibly static

I think Powers was relying too heavily on the impact and weight of the Brontë sisters that he neglected to actually bring them, particularly our protagonist, Emily Brontë, alive. She has no dynamism. No arc. She remains a shy, home-loving, and curiously, powerfully capable-in-all-things-supernatural character throughout. Secret knowledge just comes to her without effort as if she’s broken through the meta right into the author’s brain, and she seems to gain key information and ability without any work. For example, without spoiling anything specific, Emily merely knowing what to do with a pair of bitten-off fingers, at a very crucial moment, made me want to tear my hair out. How does she know their significance? Where did she learn how to do that? It’s not impressive when a character slides effortlessly out of every conflict, it’s frustrating, not exciting, and unearned. Emily would be a Mary Sue (hate the term or not, it nearly applies here) if not for the fact that not everyone in the story loves her. I adore a strong female protagonist, but with her static lack of inner personal journey, she bores me at best, and makes me root against her at worst. Characters that struggle for what they have or need leave an impact on you. If this wasn’t Emily Brontë, I don’t know how I would remember this character, and I think that’s Powers’ exact crutch here.

And Branwell? The brother that is her whole raison d’être? What a repulsive personality. He whines, makes excuses, learns nothing to the danger of his whole family, and is completely pathetic to the point that I was left dying to know why Emily is doing all that she is for him throughout the story. Her other sisters regard Branwell with contempt. Why doesn’t she? What has he done to endear himself to her so much more? We aren’t told or shown! We just have to take the book’s word for it that he’s worth the effort to her for some reason. “He’s her brother,” Tabby the housekeeper says at one point, as if that explains it all. It feels like a transparent silencer to the reader’s doubts, and it’s a surprisingly weak insistance on Powers’ part. Saving (“keeping”) Branwell is such an obnoxious, baffling motivation, layered over a character who doesn’t transform, and so I found myself growing more and more exasperated with this story as it went on.

After The Anubis Gates, I was eager to read more of Tim Powers, but this doesn’t read like his work at all to me. Where Doyle in Anubis Gates has a definite arc, he grows and changes and adapts, Emily in Brother’s Keeper is flat, preternaturally gifted for whatever reason, and thoroughly boring.

It’s hard to make a story as rich in premise as the Brontë sisters waging supernatural war against ancient werewolves on the moorland of their home, so boring, repetitive, and disappointing, but wow has Powers done it here.

Performance wise? Great. The reader puts great acting and variety into characters without much depth and is better than the source material by a long shot.