Disclaimer: This is a review, and as such will contain opinions, spoilers and (often) general shit talking. (If you talk about what you don’t like about a work, you learn a lot. When you think through a work with the stakes presented to you by the creator, by the context of the work, you learn a lot. I review things, not because I love to dislike things, but because dislike contains rich and vital information for the process of experiencing something, but I cannot access it without interrogating it.) So, if you don’t want to have this thing spoiled for you, or don’t know how to behave when a person on the internet, that you don’t know, has opinions that don’t line up with yours, this review is not for you. It’s also not for the author/creator of the work. Please and thank you.
I don’t do well with hype books. I didn’t do well with this Phantasma by Kaylie Smith.
We follow Ophelia as she navigates her mother’s death and the immediate aftermath of finding out she might lose her ancestral home. To solve this issue, her younger sister runs away to enter a dangerous competition called Phantasma so that she could use the winnings to save their home.
Ophelia follows her sister into the manor, intending to find, but the competition and its complications get in the way. When Blackwell, resident phantom of the manor, offers help (for a bargain, of course), Ophelia has to decide if she wants to take the help or risk failure.
I cringed through a lot of it and eye-rolled my way through the rest of it.
I wanted to like this, it has a lot of elements I love – it’s dark and twisted and cruel. But in the execution it fell flat.
The first thought I had when I started reading was that New Orleans felt like a token city at best. The next thought was that is my expectation of New Orleans showing up in fiction very stereotypical?
It might be, I mean it’s a city like any other, as commonplace and boring as any other. But every place has that something that makes it distinguishable, and in Phantasma it felt like had the city been unnamed or a made up one, it wouldn’t have affected the story in the least.
And, I also have to say, that because New Orleans has been so loved by authors of paranormal fiction, it has a kind of reputation for setting the mood – as well as including its history – that is completely underutilised in this case.
The time period outside of Phantasma was also unclear, and could (again) just have been a made up reality without any expectations of what it should look like. As a history buff, I get caught up in all these inane questions that don’t really have any bearing on the story, like if you say it’s a “car” but it feels more like a Ford Model T, I end up feeling like they should be calling it an “automobile” instead to ground me in the time.
Alas, none of those details mattered to the story and it was unclear why it had a pseudo-historic setting in the first place. From what I can tell, it’s so that Ophelia could be put in dresses and corsets to give it a gothic vibe (but without any true depth).
Also, this book doesn’t seem to know the difference between a corset and stays (and plays into those tired old stereotypes about corsets).
The other thing that bothered me right off the bat, was that Ophi is such low hanging fruit for a nickname for Ophelia. Had her nickname been Phil or Filly, I think I would have liked her more – feels like there would have been more of a story behind nicknames like that. (But then again, this is the book naming devils Sin and Salem, so what was I expecting?)
Because I didn’t like her at all.
Ophelia was all over the place – while I do appreciate the struggle that she goes through in the story, her attitude was just too juvenile for me.
She starts out going into Phantasma to find her sister, yet spends hardly any time thinking about Genevieve or making attempts to find her, making the sister seem like nothing more than a plot device to get her into Phantasma.
Had Genevieve’s problems been Ophelia’s own instead, and she went into Phantasma to find out the truth about the secrets her mother kept from her, you wouldn’t miss Genevieve’s existence at all.
When she finally connects with people who knew Genevieve outside of Phantasma, she’s just disrespectful and bitchy – something that isn’t made better by Genevieve later describing the girl Ophelia treats badly as one of the nicest people she’s ever known.
And it doesn’t help that, in the blink of an eye, she turns to Blackwell and becomes sickly sweet. It’s very ‘pick me’ of her.
Ophelia’s purported innocence and lack of experience in relationships manifests in her keeping Blackwell at arm’s length for no particularly solid reason, but then she’s fine using him in a way that her character doesn’t seem comfortable with.
Though this kind of contradiction is often true in real life, it doesn’t feel well written here. It merely makes Ophelia seem cruel and fickle, but I can’t find a good reason why she should be. And in the end, when the tables are turned and she finds out she’s been used by Blackwell… ah, well, it would have had more impact had her using him been more conscious, less reactionary.
Speaking of Blackwell, the romance isn’t great either.
Ophelia is desperate for praise, any praise, and she craves praise for doing the bare minimum. That reads kind of like a Reverse Uno for #WomenInMensFields, but again, it doesn’t seem intentionally written. While I agree that men and women should have equal opportunity, even to be praised profusely for doing no more than the bare minimum, when creating a work of fiction I have to wonder is this really the kind of world we want to build in our fantasies?
Blackwell tries to lean into being a shadow daddy at some point, but it’s neither well written nor convincing. I cringed and frowned my way through a lot of the sex, which seemed more like filler in order to make the story more edgy.
Because the trials or levels certainly weren’t.
I mean, in theory it’s all there; the cruel games, the violence, the magic that makes it all worse because anything could happen, the playing on your deepest fears… yet a lot of it feels like it doesn’t matter.
The riddles or clues at the beginning of each level are unhelpful, too long and don’t add anything to establishing stakes at every level (and why call them “levels”? That sounds like such a modern, gamer term for a story that, from what I can tell, is supposed to be more gothic).
And why did she make a bargain with Blackwell to help her when she never uses him to her advantage (other than almost accidentally or at the last minute)?
I think it’s supposed to be a way to raise the stakes (since the warning riddles don’t do it) that she goes in and only summons him at the last minute. But this just makes her look like an idiot, because even when she does call him in dire straits, he somehow has the time to explain things while she’s having a full-blown panic attack?
Not to mention, that he’s seen the games first hand many times and watched them as a spectator (the part about there being supernatural spectators could also have been used to greater effect, but it was just mentioned in passion because Blackwell needed CCTV into the levels) and brags about having seen it all often. Even when he shows up to help her, he repeatedly establishes his knowledge of what’s going to happen next.
So, why didn’t he just fill her in on all of that between levels instead of having sex?
Her having a huge advantage in the game, but then not calling him in to help just further made me feel like she doesn’t actually care about finding Genevieve, which then begs the question, why is she in Phantasma?
I think Genevieve’s line later in the book is telling, when she says something along the lines of “of course Ophelia would come to Phantasma and have a better time than her” – meaning she came to “find” her sister, but really it’s all about getting railed by her ghost lover.
And Blackwell is probably the most interesting character here, but he doesn’t really grow or change at all. He’s Ophelia’s boy toy – one with a long and convoluted backstory that was probably the most interesting thing about the story – but reduced to just being Ophelia’s boy toy.
Sadly, he gives ‘old man who won’t leave young woman alone’ vibes when he’s obsessed with Ophelia from the very beginning without explanation. At one point, my theory was that they were related, because the story was (unintentionally) dropping hints in that direction, buuuuut…
When she’s going through harsh trials where she watches people die (and kills some of them), his answer is to have blood-coated sex with her.
Even if the trials are kind of cliché and Ophelia spends all her time having sex in her room or making a half-hearted attempt at searching for her sister or what she needs for her bargain with Blackwell, so we never get to know any of the other contestants enough to care that they die.
The narrative relies on basic human empathy for us to feel upset when a random person dies, when we could have gotten to know the other contestants and started rooting for them to make it through (but that would have gotten in the way of Ophelia’s ‘pick me’ agenda).
It doesn’t help that Blackwell’s dialogue is relentless in pointing out the sexual innuendo in almost anything. And the cringey sex fests at the most random times, don’t help. I winced through most of the intimate scenes as the intimate language vacillated between oddly careful and suddenly direct.
It got to the point where I got annoyed by the word ‘core’, because every time the text meant cunt, it said core. It made the story sound so scared, so cleaned up for the patriarchy, to say core when that’s not what it mean (so Madonna aligned).
Because core is, in itself, a powerful thing. I like the word cunt because I’m a word nerd and it cuts to he quick. And I love women owning the word precisely because it carries power.
I feel like the ghost sex could have been a fun, unique thing to explore, but it’s just used for convenience because Ophelia is too lazy to switch positions or get undressed like the rest of us plebs.
But anyway, of course she falls for Blackwell.
How else is she going to care enough to even attempt to complete the bargain? (She barely cares enough to be proactive about finding her lost sister.)
Again, this is one of those things that doesn’t feel super intentional, more like structural framework built out of toothpicks.
The thematics don’t work for me; Ophelia is surrounded by devils in a kind of contained hell and she’s Blackwell’s ‘Angel’ and tastes like heaven… his obsession for her at literal first sight is such a strong ‘wink-wink, nudge-nudge’ but it rings hollow for most of the narrative.
Then you get to the reveal about Blackwell and it explains it, but doesn’t make it any more emotionally impactful.
And I mean duh the only way for her to care enough to free him is for her to fall in love, but the thematics don’t work for me – surrounded by devils in a hell but she’s his angel and tastes like heaven… Rings hollow without stronger build-up
The end was uninteresting, I read it in that kind of ‘lets just get this over with’ haze where I’d long since stopped caring about what happens to any of them.
The ending was decent,if predictable but the logic of the end explained why things were set up the way they were. Whether or not Ophelia is Angel reincarnated is left ambiguous.
While there are strong hints towards this – the king of the evils saying her soul needs to be reborn to someone who won’t balk at a place like Phantasma, but also have a healthy dose of apprehension in regards to it (whatever the hell that means) and to give it five centuries until it happens, Blackwell saying he won’t “lose her again” after he gets his memories back (could also just refer to Ophelia) – it isn’t made abundantly clear whether this was the case.
Could the reveal have been used more in the framework from the beginning? Yes. The story is chaotic and the writing is messy. Every once in a while I found myself wondering if this was written with AI, but then it got so cringe I had to admit the human error in it.
For me, this was (as many romantasy books are) overrated and undeserving of the hype. I don’t think I’ll be reading further in the series as I simply don’t care about any of the characters.
A note on the OCD: I can’t speak to whether it’s good representation or not – if it makes even one person seen, it has value – and I think having OCD representation in fiction that is true to it without villainising it is always good. In the beginning, it does seem like her OCD is being caused by some kind of demonic possession and having a condition like that ultimately be caused by something supernatural is a little iffy (because that implies that you can remove it through a “simple” procedure – think the “pray away the gay” nonsense). But as I said, this isn’t something I have good knowledge of.
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