Myra’s keen eye for detail also serves to increase tension and broadcast danger, with one character described as having eyes that “glimmer like pond-slick moons” and “pearl earrings glow milky white like bones on either side of her face, twitching with every word she utters.” “As soon as it hits the water, the rose blood fans out, a spiderweb of shimmering scarlet veins crawling through the pot until the whole thing clouds like it’s full of sparkling garnet dust.”

Myra narrates with an artist’s eye, as when she describes making ladyrose gel from burnt flower petals: Something more sinister is at play.Īuthor Olson blends mystery and suspense with a gothic sensibility in this standalone fantasy where all the characters are assumed white. But it soon becomes clear the governor’s son did not suffer an accidental fall, as Myra has been told. Amid the “ancient wealth and finery,” she sets to her grim work. Spirited to Rose Manor in the dead of night, Myra has four days to complete her work before the young man’s body decays beyond help. If she fails, she will be exposed as a Prodigy, and her life could be forfeit.

If Myra can use her gift to resurrect the governor’s dead son, she could earn enough money for a proper home, tuition to attend the conservatory, and even a real doctor for Lucy. When Myra’s magic is discovered by the worst person possible, the governor’s wife, she forges an uneasy bargain with the woman. Instead, she must paint while it buzzes “like a swarm of bees inside head.” With finances dwindling in the wake of her parents’ disappearances, Myra desperately needs work in order to survive - and to pay for the nurse Lucy needs to help manage a chronic illness. She can manipulate a person’s sevren threads to alter their appearance and heal injuries, but she can’t dictate when or how her magic will work. Lacking proper training and control, Myra and her powers are especially dangerous. With magic that “gives a painter the ability to alter human and animal bodies with their paintings,” Prodigies’ pieces have long been seen as “even more of an abomination than normal portrait work.” Their ability also means Prodigies “have been persecuted by the pious and captured by the greedy since the dawn of time.” Scriptures are clear that Prodigies are “a defilement of the power of our god, the Great Artist.” With her mother - a Prodigy and talented artist - among the missing, Myra Whitlock knows she has to hide her own supernatural gift if she wants to keep herself and her younger sister, Lucy, safe. Conservatives, including Lalverton’s governor, fear the growing popularity of portraiture the presence of magic makes the taboo artform even more of a threat.

Yet the devout say the vanishings are just treatment for those who choose to paint - a holy activity seen as solely the domain of the Great Artist. Olson’s A Forgery of Roses, painters are disappearing throughout Lalverton.

A forgery of roses by jessica s olson