A Dance with Death
A gothic fairytale with nods to “Beauty and the Beast,” Amanda Linsmeier’s A Dance with Death explores the overlap of love and grief.
The three Bell sisters have seen their shares of loss—of their parents, their home, and the husband and stillborn child of the eldest, Aven. Corliss holds them together as they run their family’s apothecary shop in the Pins, a small seaside town. One morning, Corliss catches grief-stricken Aven walking into the sea; shortly after, she disappears and is presumed dead.
Unable to accept this, Corliss makes a desperate decision: She goes to the rumored home of a demon in hopes of making a trade for Aven’s return. Inside the mansion, she finds only a pair of red ballet slippers; they call to her, and she steals them, growing connected to them as she uses them to rekindle her love for dancing. The mansion was not as deserted as it appeared, however: the demon, Orrin, comes to collect—first the shoes, then Corliss herself. She is imprisoned and forced to dance for him.
But Corliss is no submissive captive. She sees her sentence as an opportunity to bargain for Aven’s life. As tempers cool and feelings spark, a tenuous truce leads to a daring plan. But Corliss and Orrin have to face a greater evil in order to save Aven and each other.
The atmospheric prose paints lush pictures of misty beaches, hollow mansion halls, and a demonic queen’s court. Grief weighs heavy over all, clouding perceptions and people’s good judgement. The tender portrayal of the quiet devastation of grief is standout, rooting the characters in empathetic experiences, even when they aren’t human at all.
An atmospheric Gothic novel, A Dance with Death probes the pain of grief within a supernatural world.
Reviewed by
Danielle Ballantyne
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