Silver Nitrate

Starred review from April 3, 2023
Bestseller Moreno-Garcia (The Daughter of Doctor Moreau) takes readers behind the scenes of 1993 Mexico City’s horror movie industry in this powerful and chilling thrill ride. Lifelong film buffs Montserrat and Tristán have remained best friends since childhood, though their lives take very different turns, with Montserrat going into the underpaid, male-dominated audio editing space and Tristán rising to and falling from soap opera stardom. Tristán finds a similarly fallen friend in his new neighbor, Abel Urueta, a once legendary director whose career was destroyed by the unfinished mess of his last film. Abel claims the screenplay was written by Nazi occultist Wilhelm Ewers, who meant to use the film to cast a luck spell, but following Ewers’s sudden death the spell was inverted. Abel convinces Montserrat and Tristán that finishing the film with him will finish the original spell and bring them all luck—only for their endeavors to draw forth something very different from the dark. Combining real history with unsettling magic, Moreno-Garcia effortlessly ties explorations of misogyny, addiction, antisemitism, and racism into a plot that never falters from its breakneck pace. The narrative shifts effortlessly between fantasy, horror, and romance, helmed by a well-shaded cast. The complex female characters are particular standouts. This is a knockout. Agent: Eddie Schneider, JABberwocky.

May 15, 2023
It's 1993 in Mexico City, and Montserrat Curiel is a talented sound editor with an abiding love of vintage horror movies. Her old friend Trist�n Abascal arranges an introduction to the cult director Abel Urueta. Montserrat has long been fascinated by stories of one of Urueta's unfinished films, and when he tells her that several sorcerers, including Nazi occultist Wilhelm Ewers, tried to cast a spell that would bring them all youth and success, she's intrigued (though hardly convinced). Urueta claims that he was cursed because the film was never finished, and asks for their assistance. But after she and Trist�n help Urueta add sound to the last scene, they awaken something dangerous and must figure out how to undo the spell before they're destroyed by either the unearthly entities haunting them or cultists intent on bringing Ewers back from the dead. The intricate plot is supported by a fully realized setting and seamlessly integrated information about the detailed work of sound editing. Recommend to fans of Ring (2003), by Koji Suzuki; Night Film (2013), by Marisha Pessl; or Last Days (2013), by Adam Nevill.

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June 15, 2023
Embattled players in Mexico City's horror film industry get more than they bargained for. Mexican Canadian author Moreno-Garcia cracks open the ragtag underworld of early 1990s Mexican B-movies, a perfect backdrop for the intertwined plights of two childhood friends obsessed with horror. Montserrat Curiel ("a tiny, ferocious elf") works as a part-time audio engineer, patching together a life behind the scenes as she struggles to support her ailing sister. Trist�n Abascal, an aging actor, can't catch a break following a car wreck that claimed the life of his then-girlfriend, the daughter of a powerful film industry executive. Fortune takes a wild turn for the pair when they discover a legendary filmmaker living in Trist�n's building. Abel Urueta, a director during the golden age of 1950s cinema, has become convinced an unfinished film is cursed. He enlists Montserrat and Trist�n to help reverse the curse, and the plan yields decidedly supernatural, if terribly unintended, results. Moreno-Garcia's quick pacing and thoroughly developed characters are aided by the author's seamless blending of invented filmographies with references to actually existing niche titles (Jacques Tourneur's Cat People, anyone?) and era-appropriate moviemaking techniques ("the Dunning method," "foley art"). Details regarding the dark arts and occultism are equally immersive. Facts about the Rite of Saturn, a play organized by Aleister Crowley in 1910, bolster the fictional claim that Crowley filmed the performance using "silver nitrate stock because silver is a powerful conduit for spells." Moreno-Garcia's clever blurring of these lines makes for fantastic reading. An engaging, inventive story of moviemaking and the occult for film geeks and genre buffs.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

June 1, 2023

Montserrat is the only woman working as an audio editor in the old boys' club of Mexico City's B-film industry in the 1990s; her childhood friend Trist�n is a former soap star whose life was turned upside down when he was disfigured in a car crash that killed his girlfriend and costar. Montserrat and Trist�n are barely getting by when they meet Trist�n's neighbor, one of their favorite directors, whose career was ruined when he was unable to complete a film for a Nazi occultist who practiced eugenics. The director wants their help to finish the scene that holds the final spell that the occultist promised would bring them all great fortune. But once they agree, a dangerous magic is reawakened. Moreno-Garcia effortlessly delivers the details of place and Montserrat and Trist�n's complicated personal relationship without sacrificing the novel's compelling pace and intriguing plot, one that contemplates racism and sexism. VERDICT Moreno-Garcia (The Daughter of Doctor Moreau) has written a love letter to Mexico City's film industry and an excellent entry into the popular horror subgenre of occult films. Suggest to fans of The Shoemaker's Magician by Cynthia Pelayo, Experimental Film by Gemma Files, and The Remaking by Clay McLeod Chapman.

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