This book is hard to categorize; it’s not really horror, it’s not really science fiction, it’s not what I would think of when someone said ‘fantasy, and it’s got some elements of a thriller. It does have a unique premise: that certain wells in Southern California only fill up during a rainy season (which does not occur every year there) and have the ability to suck people into them. That’s not the odd bit; the odd bit is that some people can come back out of them years later, looking just as they did when they went in. And the well creates a glass talisman containing some of the person’s memory.

Widower Phil Aisworth has his quiet world on his property turned upside down when first his twin sister, Marianne, dies and leaves him as guardian of her preteen daughter, Betsy. With that comes some strife with Hannah Darwin, an older woman who was Marianne’s friend and who helped bring Betsy up- she wants to be Betsy’s guardian. Around this same time a sexy woman appears at Phil’s door in the middle of the night, claiming that her car broke down. She’s very fetching- and also incredibly nosy and pushing. Meanwhile we have a backstory from 1884; several people back then fell into the well while fighting over things. Phil has to sort out who is telling the truth, who is after what- and do it before any of the villains (there are several!) hurt or kill anyone else.

The author does a good job of building tension; that Phil & Betsy can’t trust anyone, the semi-remote location, the constant rain and flooding, all add up to a creepy atmosphere. There are constant surprises cropping up. Phil and Betsy are good, strong characters - I did find it odd that Betsy did not mourn her mother more visibly, although I have to admit she really didn’t have time to mourn with everything that happened. There are an amazing number of characters from both past and present, which I found confusing in the beginning of the book, but it resolved in the end. I enjoyed this book a lot, in part because of its novel premise. ( )

This is a book that will definitely stick with you. It is kind of complicated and hard to explain. There is a man who ends up taking his niece in after her mother dies. On his property there is a well that has some kind of native American powers. The other half of the story is told by a couple of people who came through the well from a hundred years ago.

I couldn't put it down, because not only did I find it slightly haunting...but it was downright bizarre. This is the first that I have read of this author and I think that he is someone to keep his eye on. ( )

The story is told in 3 time lines, 1889, 1958 and present time, which merges as all the characters are assembled in the present. What starts of with the sacrifices of a desperate father to preserve his dying daughter becomes a treasure hunt through time for unsavoury people and idealists, involving murder, theft and human sacrifice. This is a solid and coherent story that capture the readers attention with a fine balance of momentum and mystery. The female characters are too off the wall to be convincing, but otherwise Blaylocks fantasy elements are solidly anchores in a realistically told tale.
It reminds me a bit of Eric Nylunds Dry Water, but that mey be because they share the concept of timetravel through water and the desert setting. ( )

Blaylock's California realistically magical novels (as opposed to his more-straight-forwardly rollicking and wishes-he-were-English genre novels) are less action-based and more meditative than his pal Tim Powers's. They feel to me more Northern Californian than Southern. Originally I'd feared (from the description) that this novel would be too Gothic and horror-based for my tastes, but it wasn't. It's chock full of metaphysical symbolism and descriptions of the ordinary. ( )