mary Jones with cover art by Martin M Barbdu and published by Aconyte Books. Thank you to Aconyte Publishing, who provided me with a preview copy of this release to review. Per Aconyte’s site…

A sickness haunts the dreams of Arkham’s citizens – something deep in the Dreamlands is rising… return to Arkham Horror’s The Drowned City in this daring adventure. April May is convinced she has the worst job at the Arkham Advertiser: placing adverts for lost dogs is about as tedious as it gets! The only thing that alleviates her boredom is her fantasies of pulp adventures. But when her best friend succumbs to a mysterious unwakeable sleep, she realizes the city is sleepwalking towards something terrible. It’s been raining for days and the Miskatonic River is rising to dangerous levels. Arkham grinds to a halt as its population falls into a deep sleep. Under cover of these apparently unrelated disasters, shadowy forces move to usher in something truly nightmarish. With the aid of psychologist Carolyn Fern and Professor Harvey Walters, April May must venture into the strange realms of the Dreamlands, where a man in a golden mask holds the key to rousing the city from its collective nightmare. But for Arkham, the waters continue to rise, and it’s closer than ever to the manifestation of something that no one can wake from.

"The Nightmare Quest of April May” acts as a thematic follow up to Carrie Harris’ “The Forbidden Visions of Lucious Galloway” and is the second in a trilogy of novels that Aconyte is releasing to tie into Fantasy Flight Games’ “The Drowned City” event, which itself includes a new LCG campaign as well as the first DLC for Mansions of Madness in several years. This newest Aconyte novel is also the fourth book by author Rosemary Jones set in the Arkham Files universe and marks her return to the City of Arkham, where she began her mythos work in 2021’s "Mask of Silver". Throughout her prior releases, Ms. Jones has taken readers on a tour of the setting’s varied locales, including Innsmouth and Kingsport, while her creations, including Jeany Lin, Betsy Baxter, Raquel Malone Gutierrez & Paul Kopp, have interacted with over a dozen different investigators from the IP’s setting. In so doing, Ms. Jones has left a significant stamp on the lore of the Arkham Files universe and established her style of character-driven cozy horror across the setting. That familiarity with the setting, and her knowledge of the era, aid Ms. Jones in the heavy lifting of this release.

The opening chapters of "The Nightmare Quest of April May" provide readers with a robust introduction to April May and establish a tone for the book as April makes her way through life as a twenty-year-old resident of a Rivertown boarding house employed in entry-level sales. References to transportation, societal norms, and pop culture create a reading experience that makes clear the day-to-day challenges April contends with. At the start of the tale April is at a crossroads as she is determining how best to move forward in her life and career. Ms. Jones introduces the reader to April’s fleshed out support network of fellow River Town boarders early in the story. Ranging from a failed sports hero to a local nurse, her wise landlady and her enthusiastic best friend, readers are given many angles to view April’s interactions with those around her, which helps to provide different perspectives on the protagonist's struggles. In addition to her new creations, Ms. Jones also successfully weaves pre-existing investigators into her story.

"The Nightmare Quest of April May" picks up Carolyn Fern’s story after the events of her “Grim Investigations” entry, but before the events of Lair of the Crystal Fang, and Ms. Jones uses that era to show the psychologist grappling with the fallout of her initial exposure to the mythos, which is handled fabulously. Ms. Jones’ eye towards treating her Arkham Files work as historical fiction factors heavily into Carolyn’s life as a psychologist. The entertainment of the time often portrayed this relatively new branch of medicine as malicious. The characters that interact with Carolyn are often working from the negative stereotypes associated with that pop culture knowledge, and this presents interesting, and well developed, challenges for the doctor. Readers are also treated to the most fully developed use of Harvey Walters we have been given in the Aconyte line. Harvey is a standout character throughout this novel and is both engaging and fun every time he enters the story. Hopefully this will not be the last time Ms. Jones chooses to include him in her work. There is a third investigator that factors heavily into the story, but their revelation is part of the fun of the narrative and not to be given away prior to opening the book. One of the choices Ms. Jones makes with her narrative is that although the characters are predominantly working towards the same goal, they have different motivations for doing it and different opinions on how to best go about it. That variance allows for the investigators to have abrasive encounters with each other on their separate quests. Each of these confrontations is handled with an eye towards pulp drama and presents some of the best moments in the story.

An omnipresent concern throughout this story is the storm threatening to flood Arkham. As the investigators each work to resolve a type of sleeping disease affecting more and more Arkhamites, the ongoing storm presents a well-realized physical concern for the residents of Arkham, and of River Town specifically. The potential consequences of the rising tide for the community are a historical concern for the area and Ms. Jones utilizes lore-specific locations like Schoffner's General Store to demonstrate the mindset of the community as they come to grips with what is coming. Creatively, Ms. Jones successfully uses the weather to provide a very real feeling of impending doom for her characters without ever resorting to a typical fight scene to give a physical challenge for the protagonists. The storm acts as an adversary just as much as the actual antagonists of "The Nightmare Quest of April May", and the antagonists are fantastic! The forces April May is arrayed against have solid reasoning behind their actions, and their plan is well laid out and fits perfectly into the pulp end of the Arkham Files mythos. Clues as to who is involved are provided frequently and the revelation of why they are doing what they are, as well as their history with Arkham, is laid out to great effect. I hope that the antagonists transition into one of the Arkham game systems in the future so I can also enjoy battling them myself.

As I said in the beginning, this book is part of an overall moment in the Arkham Files IP as part of "The Drowned City". Aconyte has released over twenty books related to the Arkham Files setting in the past five years and each has succeeded at different aspects of the IP. "The Nightmare Quest of April May" may be the most well executed in terms of its relationship with the setting due to its tie to the forthcoming game releases, though. I suspect that taking the time to read this release, before playing the LCG or DLC content of "The Drowned City", will have an impactful effect on the narrative you create at your gaming table. "The Nightmare Quest of April May" works fully on its own merits, presenting readers with engaging character work and a worthwhile mystery, but as a tie-in novel I believe it excels in that it elevates the experience for fans engaging in the game’s narrative at this turning point in Arkham’s history.

I hope you enjoyed this look at “The Nightmare Quest of April May”. If you would like more updates about the history of Arkham, its residents, and events tied to the area, then you can find me on Bluesky or ArkhamHistorian.com

Best regards
Dude in progress