occult

This is the first Tananarive Due book I read. The story is so engrossing that I went to bed, kept thinking about the story and got up to finish the book. It made me laugh and cry, I hated the book to end. I read a lot and the story stayed with me for days. Ms. Due is a real talent and I'm looking forward to reading her other books but I doubt they can top The Good House. For fans of horror and suspense this is a must read, I enjoyed this book like and compare it to the early Stephen
King books.

THE GOOD HOUSE is a fairly good ghost story, replete with voodoo and evil demons (the baka). Ms. Due's prose is polished and well written. Most of her characters achieve a good realization, and her book seems well planned and focused. However, as suspense works go, the suspense comes in small doses and seems protracted and manipulative. The strongest presence in the book is the teaming of Corey Hill and Sean Leahy. Their friendship seems strongly bound by their "differences" and in their doom-making "ritual" that unleashes the terrifying baka. The book is cinematic in its structure, and there are few really frightening sequences. However, Ms. Due virtually negates her ghost story by its "miracle" ending. I like happy endings, but this one is so contrived and ridiculous, it leaves a bad taste.
Due is obviously a talented writer, and her skills are evident. This just isn't that good a book.

In THE GOOD HOUSE by Tananarive Due, Angela Toussaint inherits a house in Sacajawea, Washington from her Grandmother, Marie Toussaint, who had been a nurse, an herbalist, and a vodou priestess. Angela also inherits something else - a curse. This ultimately affects her son, her ex-husband, all her friends, and the town.
I loved this book. It has a complex story structure; it traveled between time and character viewpoints. It had great characters. Due has a talent for making her characters real and for making you care about them. There were scary parts such as when the neighbor Leahy goes to collect herbs from Angela's land and the reader first encounters the thing full out. Due, in an afterword, notes that this book is not a book about voodoo, and that she wanted a religion based in the African-American experience. The book is about relationships and connections, there is the underlying theme of the connections between the living, the land, and the ancestors. I loved it.
Putting aside all the hype, I have read three books by Tananarive Due, and I actually think she is the next Stephen King!