This book has everything: Southern gothic, odd families, genius loci, magic, mystery and one of the strangest settings ever. The Elementals series is one of my favorite series of all time and I highly recommend it to everyone!

Written back in the 80's a lot of my fellow book loving friends have recommended THE ELEMENTALS to me over the last few years. My favorite McDowell quote is when he said that horror writing requires “taking the improbable, the unimaginable, and the impossible, and making it seem not only possible—but inevitable. Like the days at Beldame blended into each other, this story could’ve continued on endlessly, lazy and satisfying. Harry Potter meets Percy Jackson with an added twist of teenage angst, hormones and uncertainty… I am officially HOOKED!that's where we meet Big Barbara McCray Luker's loving mother, Odessa the the black servant, the softhearted Dophan Savage and his wife Leigh Luker's sister. And how long will it be until Nicole is forced to use her ability to kill in front of everyone, revealing the true darkness of her powers? It felt more like the beginning of a basic high school drama movie rather than what it turned out to be. The southern atmosphere and isolation of the vacation houses of the two main families couldn't have been in a better location. And there is plenty to admire in "The Elementals," a story that has accumulated dust in more ways than one!

The Elementals is a southern gothic horror, which slowly builds with atmospheric descriptions of family dynamics, heat, sand and isolation.McDowell has a compulsion to remind the reader that Odessa isn’t white, that she occupies a particular position in the family. Did the urban myths and customs of the Savage family make them all like this or do we blame the hot, brutal sun for their eccentric ways? At the very beginning, he comes off as a mysterious individual, maybe causing me to be more intrigued by him, but t o be fair I don’t know.

This is my second Michael McDowell Once again, the master of ghost houses and familial interactions as well as making one feel welcome in the Southern State of Alabama. Típica empleada de color de los estados sureñas del país, de esas que conviven con la familia durante décadas. I’ve gotta say, if this is indicative of the general level of McDowell’s skills, it’s far from the last of his works I’ll inhale. By the end of the book, my involvement with the story through its drowsy, summer-hot meanderings was such that I felt properly queasy at the end game of the malevolent force at Beldame. Soon after, being that it was summer, most of the family head to Beldame for their summer vacation, which is the same place Marian had just succumbed to cancer and died.Almost immediately, she questions her father about the third house on the island, where nobody lives, and which seems to be in the process of being inexplicably consumed by a sand dune. The McCrays and Savages, two fine Mobile families allied by marriage, have been coming to Beldame for years. As long as you're not one of those splatterpunk fanatics who demands someone getting wasted every other page. The Elementals is a Southern gothic horror book that starts off slow and builds to an epic ending of death, destruction and secrets being revealed. Today’s book is “ The Elementals” by Michael McDowell, one of my favorite authors who I don’t feel is remembered or recognized as much as he should be—so we’re all going to do that now.

It’s certainly weird, but McDowell doesn’t seem to be suggesting that there’s outright abuse going on. A big part of bringing his characters to life is the dialogue and McDowell has a wonderful ear for it. The Savage family are linked by marriage, friendship and history to the McCrays and both families spend the summer at Beldame.

They are trying to reunite with what they believe to be their child, when really, it is just The Elementals in disguise.