In 2010, Carroll's Black Swan Rising introduced readers to Garet James, a young jewelry designer who discovered her female ancestors had been guarding the boundaries between our world and the supernatural for centuries. This revelation came, not by coincidence, just as she met and began to fall in love with a vampire named Will Hughes, who wound up stealing a magical artifact from her and running off to Paris to try to find his way into the Summer Country and shake off his curse. The Watchtower opens shortly after Garet's own arrival in Paris, as she seeks help from the French fairy kingdom in tracking down her lover.
Carroll (the husband-and-wife team of Carol Goodman and Lee Slominsky) alternates Garet's contemporary adventure with flashbacks to Will's human life in early 17th-century Europe, where he falls in love with Garet's fairy ancestor Marguerite. Desperate to be with her forever, Will seeks the help of the evil magician John Dee--not knowing that Marguerite is willing to become a mortal to be with him. (John Dee is a real historical figure, as is his accomplice Cosimo Ruggieri; the novel also includes coy references to "the poet" from Stratford Marguerite dumps to be with Will.) Eventually, the two plotlines intersect, but their resolution is largely open-ended--and though The Watchtower can just about hold its own as a story at the surface level, so much of its emotional resonance depends on knowing what happened to Garet and Will in Black Swan Rising that readers essentially need to bet all or nothing on the planned trilogy. --Ron Hogan, founder of Beatrice.com