Lady Diana Furnaval's husband, William, is from a long line of gatekeepers. William was charged with the responsibility of watching what ghostly apparitions came through the Derby gate and banishing any that caused trouble. Unfortunately, he was unable to resist the tempting allure of meeting another gatekeeper in Transylvania... and William never returned. Now, Diana finds herself widowed in the late 1800s with a supernatural war at hand. Can Diana stop the coming apocalypse?

Lisa Morton offers readers a new historical heroine, a woman willing to go up against both the social conventions of the time period and demonic beings who seek to destroy this world. Diana is quite the jetsetter for her time period, traveling from England to India, China, the United States, Ireland, and the NETHERWORLD. While the story has one overall theme, the trips to each locale almost read like separate vignettes.

Lisa Morton injects a lot of historical details into NETHERWORLD, focusing more on the prejudices and conditions of workers rather than the typical parties and clothing we usually see in historical novels. I like how she approaches the opium trade in particular. However, it is her two sidekicks, her cat, Mina, and her new friend, Yi-kin, who are the most intriguing. While we learn some about them, I hope that future books will offer us even more insight into both of them.

NETHERWORLD is an unusual paranormal historical tale. It will not appeal to everyone as the story flow is a bit uneven. NETHERWORLD is the first book in the Chronicles of Diana Furnaval series and I'll be curious to see what direction Lisa Morton takes with future books in the series.

Book Summary

In nineteenth-century Victorian England, a young widow finds that she has inherited more than her late husband's property: The Furnavals serve as the ancestral keepers of supernatural portals scattered around the globe. When demonic entities begin crossing over from the Netherworld, Lady Diana realizes that a war is brewing, and she must be the one to confront it.

Accompanied by a young Chinese sailor named Yi-kin, her feline guardian Mina, and a mysterious scholar, Stephen, Diana will begin a journey to solve the mystery of her husband's death and prevent the apocalypse.