So, I went in to R. S. Belcher's latest return to Golgotha, Nevada, with as much of an open mind as I could muster, since, unlike previous entries in the series, this one is focused predominantly on only one character. Given the last two books in the series have been ensemble pieces with all the lunatics playing their own roles in the proceedings, I wasn't sure if following Maude Stapleton away from Golgotha would retain the magic that made the first two books so entertaining.
As it turns out, I needn't have worried much, since it seems Golgotha's weirdness isn't the only pocket of surrealness in the post Civil War world. Indeed, while Maude's narrative is set in 1870, we also follow her "Grandmother", Pirate Queen Anne Bonney across the oceans of 1721 on a quest of her own to find Carcosa deep in the heart of Africa. And in one really strange passage, the two timelines converge, making for one heck of a passage.
So, basically, we catch up with Maude not long after the end of The Shotgun Arcana, returning to her roots in Charleston, South Carolina, where her father has taken her daughter Constance. Leaving behind her new love, Mutt, she seeks full custody of her daughter and control of her inheritance from her Grandmother. Not to say there aren't complications of both the normal legal, but that comes in later.
In the mean time, we join Anne escaping the hangman's noose in Port Royal, Jamaica. She's gravid with child, and ends up delivering a son on the beach as part of her escape. Giving her son up to a friend to deliver to her family in South Carolina until she can return, she sets off on a quest for a city she's dreamed of paved with the bones of monsters.
Anne's story eventually chronicles her voyage to becoming the first Westerner to become a Daughter of Lilith. Maude, already being one, and in the process of teaching Constance to be one, must deal with her sisters within the rather small company, who seem to think that Constance needs to be sacrificed to refill the Grail that Maude emptied towards the end of book 1. We learn of the origins of Lilith mythology in this setting, and we learn of Lilith's husband, Typhon, who has a sect of his own, the aptly named Sons of Typhon, who's blood is much like the slick oil that was causing people to go nuts back in book 1.
As with just about every book in the Golgotha series, there's much to unpack in terms of mythology represented. Anne's tale takes us through the Oya and Orishas, while Maude's contemporaries represent Aztec and Oriental cultural mythologies as well.
It's also fair to say that Golgotha gets a little of its own placement in the narrative, as letters between Maude and Mutt travel a few times in the narrative. Mind you, this is where the odder bits of humor float up, as the local golem maker is reported to have hooked up with Shelley Wollstone, and a new brand of snake oil is drawing in customers from places like far off Night Vale.
And Maude even gets a bit of non-Mutt romance with a reporter who trails her doggedly through the book, even joining in her desperate flight to Carcosa on Anne's old ship, the Hecate.
My only regret on finishing this volume is realizing it's likely be a few years before we get another Golgotha volume, since I assume we'll be dealing with his other two series again before we return to Nevada.
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