Roc Hardcover - April 7, 1992
405 pages
There is a door in an artist's garden: an elaborate carved passageway into a realm ruled by a dark sorceress queen. There entities strange and wondrous roam the Netherworld--yet none as astonishing as the shape-shifting Catswold...
Raised by the old witch Mag, Melissa discovers a perilous secret. She has more than one form--human girl and magical cat--and once inhabited two worlds. And it is her destiny to return to a mystic realm of wonder and terror, to do battle for her people's liberation and the crown that is rightfully hers.
A man beset by tragedy, painter Braden West is intrigued by the calico cat who has charmed her way into his studio. But his "guest" is more than she seems, and Braden's very existence will be radically altered as he follows Melissa from the Hell Pit into the dread perils of an evil ruling court, thrust into the heart of a magical conflict with more at stake than he could have possibly imagined.
(Spoiler level: Moderate)
About a few hours after I closed the book, I was about to sit down to eat dinner when a scary thought hit me.
Melissa...was...seventeen. Braden was, what, twice her age? All those scenes. Eeeeeeeeeew.
Anyway, on to the rest of the review. This is supposed to be a prequel of sorts to the Joe Grey Mysteries by Shirley Rousseau Murphy, which I also enjoy but don't review here because I started reading them so long ago. It's technically a prequel in that the Catswolders are supposed to explain how Joe Grey and Dulcie can talk. It's not a prequel in that it was actually written before Joe Grey, and the word "prequel" is a term for a book that is written after another but takes place before. It's also not in that it doesn't take place where Joe Grey does and has none of the same characters.
There are two protagonists here: Melissa, who is Catswold (meaning that she's a cat shapeshifter) and living in secret for seventeen years. Then there's Braden, who is just a human trying to live a normal life after his wife got hit by a car. Melissa is perilously boring, so I kept anticipating another Braden chapter; unfortunately, they were few and far between.
The antagonist, an evil queen, is also pretty lackluster. As a whole, in fact, the fantasy Underworld is pretty basic. Fortunately, Murphy keeps things moving pretty fast. Sometimes too fast, but anything to distract you from how regular the world is.
Grade: B-
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