Ladies and gents — it's back. And by "it," I mean stories set in the world of Suzannah Rowntree's fabulous historical fantasy mystery series, Miss Sharp's Monsters. But this time, we're following Miss Dark, a young woman with the ability to see ghosts (sort of) who gets roped into impersonating a missing princess in order to con a family of royal monsters out of a fortune. Tall and Dark is the first in Miss Dark’s Apparitions, the successor series to Miss Sharp's Monsters, and it's every bit as good as the original. I was lucky enough to get a review copy, so I'll be sharing my thoughts with y'all today. 

You Absolutely Need to Read Tall and Dark

1. You don't have to have read Miss Sharp's Monsters to enjoy it. While this is a successor to Miss Sharp, it's not a direct sequel. We have a mostly new cast, a new conflict, a new story type — rather than solving the mystery, we're causing it, so to speak, though we do take a bit of a turn into detective work at one point — and explanation enough that the new reader won't be lost.
2. If you did read Miss Sharp, everything you loved is still there. Well, Liz Sharp and Inspector Short aren't (though one character a very definite reference to Miss Sharp at one point). But you've got the same world, the same excellent mix of fantasy and historical detail, the same storytelling style . . . you get the idea. Plus, while this isn't a sequel series, you do see some of the effects of Miss Sharp's adventures, cameos from and references to the previous books . . . and also one excellent crossover character, but we'll get to him in a minute.
3. The writing voice is excellent. Like Miss Sharp, Tall and Dark is written in a sort of updated version of the Victorian memoir style: first person, with asides and comments to the reader, but still fairly quick-paced. I will say that there are a few sections that are essentially third person, in which the narrator relates events that she wasn't there for (but which she was presumably told about later), which are . . . kind of jarring? But on the whole, I liked the style just as much as I did in the previous series.
4. The characters are excellent. Molly Dark is our POV character, and while she's not quite as strong a presence as Liz Sharp was, she's still excellent. She's doing her best to support her family and make use of her particular gift — the ability to see imprints, or memories of the deceased, to do some good for others. And then she gets wrapped up in trying to con a family of royal monsters out of a fortune and proves to have several devious bones . . . as well as a healthy sense of romance to balance out her learned and necessary practicality. (She also has a fun tendency towards malapropisms, which makes for some interesting dialogue and narration.) Nijam, the brains behind the scheme, is also an interesting character — very logical, very scientific-minded, very blunt and no-nonsense, but also very much motivated by matters of the heart as much or more than she is by matters of practicality, no matter how much she would probably dislike admitting it. And, of course . . .
5. Grand Duke Vasily is back! He has not been having a good time of it since the end of his adventures with Miss Sharp, that's for sure. But I was delighted to see him return, and more delighted still by the fact that he gets to be a main-main character this time around rather than dropping in and out of the narrative as the story demands.

Tall and Dark came out just this past weekend — have you read it yet? Are you going to read it? If you're a fellow Miss Sharp fan, how excited are you to return to this world? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!