Oh the desolation.

84. Teeth in the Mist – Dawn Kurtagich

Despite this also being written in an essentially pieces of blog and letters format, I enjoyed Teeth in the Mist a lot more than the last Kurtagich book I read, The Dead House. There were a lot more full scenes to go along with the letters and blog posts, which may have made a lot of the difference. Also, I do like the Faust story, and this had a lot of that in it. Or maybe it’s just the super creepy ram that I like since I just painted a series of four of the pigs I currently have behaving like the movie versions of scary British children, and Salem is poking a ram skull – because when there’s folk horror elements, one must be a ram skull because they have cool curly horns. Anyway, there’s Faust, there’s the devil’s daughter, the devil’s language, and a feisty couple of ladies ready to break the wheel, per se, at two different points in time.

The setting is great as well – rocky, barren, misty, truly isolated and foreboding. And while this is YA and that means some overdramatics and magic and romance between two characters who otherwise can’t stand to be in the same room, of course, it has a lot of creepy elements that work well – like the ram and being stuck with a bunch of people who think you’re a witch (and you are) in a place where there’s not really anyone who could effectively help. I also liked the twist on the Faust story, it made Faust seem like even more of an eternal jerk.

Salem is not poking anything here, but he’s also not wearing a sweater like in the painting and I don’t have a ram skull. Yet.