"Death is a beginning..."
The year is 1914 in Belfast.
William Jackson Crawford thinks the height of his problems are suddenly losing his housekeeper for his upper-middle class family, but little does he know. Since the Titanic disaster two years prior, the upper elite of society have begun dabbling in the occult, driven by grief to try and contact their dearly departed - including his wife. William prides himself on being a man of logic and science, a proud skeptic, but there are things even he cannot explain when he meets a young medium named Kathleen.
He is driven to find the facts behind the strange and spiritually occurances - is this just a cruel trick, or is something else lurking just behind the veil?
Based on the true story of William Crawford and the famous mystic Kathleen Goligher, along with familar characters such as Houdini and Doyle, this fictional retelling of a chilling story is one to read with the lights on.
The Spirit Engineer opens up to scenes of upper-middle class domesticity, a beautiful family with less than beautiful pride. The man of the house, William Crawford, is immediately thrust into the spotlight and never steps out of our view the whole time. He is sexist and classist, such as you would expect with the times and his status, but it made for a strange feeling - how odd it is to go through the story loathing the main character for their attittude but being so intruiged in their life and still hoping for their success along the way.
Victim or Villian? That's up to you to figure out.
The other characters, from his family, to the friends he meets along the way were so full of life - so brilliantly crafted that it feels the reader could reach out and touch them.
This might be a ghost story, but it's about the ghosts that haunt us in real life too - about loss, family and the pressures we face in the world of the living.
Written in period language, there was a small adjustment period with this book but after a few chapters I was completely immersed in the story - it started off slow, almost mundane, before descending into utter, spine-chilling chaos in the most unexpected ways.
It's no secret this book has been highly anticipated, so I was definitely concerned this wouldn't live up to the hype around it's name - but I was not disappointed. Atmospheric, eerie and otherworldly - this was like if 'The Greatest Showman' was set in a graveyard during the witching hour and I loved every page of it.
"A mystery is only a fact in disguise."
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