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Synopsis:
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Daughter of Doctor Moreau and Mexican Gothic comes a fabulous meld of Mexican horror movies and Nazi occultism: a dark thriller about the curse that haunts a legendary lost film–and awakens one woman’s hidden powers.
Montserrat has always been overlooked. She’s a talented sound editor, but she’s left out of the boys’ club running the film industry in ’90s Mexico City. And she’s all but invisible to her best friend, Tristán, a charming if faded soap opera star, though she’s been in love with him since childhood.
Then Tristán discovers his new neighbor is the cult horror director Abel Urueta, and the legendary auteur claims he can change their lives—even if his tale of a Nazi occultist imbuing magic into highly volatile silver nitrate stock sounds like sheer fantasy. The magic film was never finished, which is why, Urueta swears, his career vanished overnight. He is cursed.
Now the director wants Montserrat and Tristán to help him shoot the missing scene and lift the curse . . . but Montserrat soon notices a dark presence following her, and Tristán begins seeing the ghost of his ex-girlfriend.
As they work together to unravel the mystery of the film and the obscure occultist who once roamed their city, Montserrat and Tristán may find that sorcerers and magic are not only the stuff of movies.
Review:
Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s latest novel Silver Nitrate starts with two childhood friends, Montserrat and Tristan. Montserrat grew up to work on the sound design for films and Tristan grew up to be a soap opera actor. Their friendship has been on and off (usually off when Tristan has a lover and on again when he is single). When Tristan’s latest relationship fizzles, he moves into a new apartment building, one that also houses Abel Urueta, a cult horror filmmaker they both loved growing up. When Montserrat and Tristan have dinner with Abel, the subject turns to his lost film, Behind the Yellow Wall. There is rumor that the film is lost but it is also cursed, that many of the people around it have died or had bad luck. Abel says that most of the film has been destroyed, except for one roll. He talks them into helping him finish the sound for this section of film, and afterward the world turns upside down.
This novel has many great aspects that make it a tense thriller with horror aspects. The playing of the film unravels the rest of the story around the filming. With cultists, black magic, Nazis, and curses following Montserrat and Tristan, they race against time and death to get to the bottom of the mystery of the film and the filmmakers. The story is interesting, but I did not fall in love with this novel like I have with previous Moreno-Garcia novels. She has written a large variety of novels, and this is a 90s cult horror-thriller. This sounds like a story that could be remarkable, but I felt the final third of the book being a slog. The finale felt a little underwhelming based on the buildup, and a novel that is interesting and starts out great does not end with the same amount of momentum. This could have been because I did not really feel connected to the characters. Tristan and Montserrat were decent but they were not people that I cared about by the time they were in serious trouble.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia is an author that cannot be accused of writing the same book twice. I would much rather read an author that does this than an author that relies on the same troupes and stories that gave them popularity. Even if some of the novels are not as good as others. I respect that she is writing a large scope of stories, and that sometimes it is my fault that I did not connect with this story as much as I did with a different one. Silver Nitrate is one I did not connect with as deeply as Mexican Gothic or Signal to Noise, but this definitely does not discourage me from waiting impatiently for her next novel.
I received this as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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