Review by Frank Plowright

Anna’s twin sister was murdered by someone in Samson Brothers Circus while they were stuck in the desert. Kat, however, is hanging around as a ghost, and can communicate with Anna and occasionally take possession of her body as they attempt to discover who killed her. Spectacle Book One charmed and intrigued as Anna made a few wrong connections, and ended very abruptly as one character suddenly began to mutate.

It’s not an isolated incident. Whereas ghosts were the only supernatural intrusion as Megan Rose Gedris introduced Spectacle, Book Two features several additional weird creations, none of them friendly. That’s in addition to the recurring glimpses at a nightmare event in Anna and Kat’s childhood, and the realisation that perhaps no-one in the circus is safe. Gedris is imaginative with both transformations and threats, and guides the audience toward conclusions, but are they right? The sample art shows conjoined twins Eve and Lynn, who make no pretence of being pleasant people, but are they killers?

As before, the pages would look better if Gedris varied the viewpoints more often, and changed the distance from which people are viewed. Otherwise, people transmit the necessary emotional weight and individual panels are charming.

While most surprises will roll out satisfyingly as planned, Gedris has overplayed Kat’s big revelation to Anna two-thirds of the way through, something readers will have picked up on long before the full disclosure. Some readers may be frustrated that no mysteries introduced in the first book are solved, and more are added here, although by the end of the Book Two much has changed. However, the continuing joy of Spectacle is the assorted personalities and the way they mix with each other, and Gedris provides a more satisfying cliffhanger ending to take us to Book Three.