Thank you so much to Quercus Books and NetGalley for this ARC! I really enjoyed the last Silvia Moreno-Garcia book I read so I was excited to read her new release!

This is a horror/thriller set in 1993 in Mexico City. We follow Montserrat, a sound editor who is constantly overlooked and undermined by the men she works with and is all but invisible to her best friend and childhood love Tristán. After moving into his new apartment Tristán discovers that his new neighbour is none other than the cult horror director Abel Urueta. Abel directed a film that was never finished and was said to be cursed and as Tristán and Montserrat listen to tales of Nazi occultists and magic imbued in silver nitrate film, they are sucked in. Now Abel says he can change their lives if they help him dub the last scene of the unfinished film and finish the spell that will lift the curse of bad luck that has followed him since. As they work together it becomes clear that magic, sorcery and dark presences may not be stuff of movies after all.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s writing! It just sucks me in every time and she can make the mundane absolutely fascinating to me. Her books are very atmospheric and this was certainly the case with this one as well. There were a couple of scenes in this that genuinely freaked me out. Moreno-Garcia also excels at writing strong female leads and Montserrat was no exception. She had so much strength and didn’t take any crap which I loved. Tristán to put it bluntly is a bit of an ass but you can’t help by love him at the same time.

One of my favourite books is Night Film by Marisha Pessl and if you enjoyed that then I think you will really love this. It has the same creepy vibes along with the mystery behind the cursed film and the director behind it. It’s very much a slow burn but it is worth it and throughout the whole book you are kept interested and on your toes. It was the kind of reading experience where you’re just waiting for something to pop out and scare the characters if that makes sense. You’re wondering if this scene is entirely innocent or is the character going to see something horrifying and that just made it for me.

In short, I loved it and I would definitely recommend it if you want a slow burn, well paced thriller with horror and fantastical elements. This was released on 18th July and I can’t wait to delve into more of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s backlist and read future releases!

Silvia Moreno-Garcia has not yet written two books in the same genre. Though that statement may depend on how you understand genre. Her latest novel, Silver Nitrate, can broadly be considered as ‘fantasy’ or ‘horror’ and Moreno-Garcia has done plenty of work in these two broad categories. She has dabbled in gothic (Mexican Gothic) and vampires (Certain Dark Things). Silver Nitrate is something else again, concerning itself with dark magic and the occult. What connects all of her works is her love of each particular corner of the genre and the associated tropes and her always engaging protagonists.
Silver Nitrate is set in early 1990s Mexico City. Montserrat is a freelance sound editor in what is a boys-club environment. Montserrat loves horror movies, the cheesier and more B-grade the better, but ‘the market for local horror productions wasn’t substantial enough to support two filmmakers intent on churning out scary flicks’.
Her best friend (and long-time crush) is Tristán, a former soap-opera star whose career was cut short by a tragedy. Tristán discovers he lives in the same building as Abel Urueta, a slightly famous horror film director from the 1960s. Urueta retired from filmmaking after his horror movie Beyond the Yellow Door collapsed before being completed.
Urueta tells the pair a story about the film – that it was actually a way to channel magic and that the failure to finish it had brought bad luck to all of the cast and crew. He convinces the pair that if the three of them can finish putting the sound onto a particular short reel of the original silver-nitrate print he has, the bad luck spell can be broken. Thinking to humour him, the two complete the film, only to find that the act activates some sort of dormant magical circuit giving them unaccounted-for luck – but also increasingly terrifying side effects.
Before long, Montserrat and Tristán find themselves in a world that comes straight out of their beloved horror movies. A world that involves a Nazi occultist and his followers, precognition, magical runes and the spirits of the dead. And they have to quickly learn the rules of this world in order to save themselves and prevent greater disaster.
As with all of Moreno-Garcia’s books, one of the great draws of this story is the finely drawn, complex main characters, who gain some of their power from their knowledge of the medium. Montserrat uses her knowledge of the history of horror film and the methods of creating it to her advantage as she develops her own rudimentary magical abilities. Tristán is forced to come to terms with the trauma that ended his career and consider the way he lives his life and the way he treats Montserrat. And all the while they are learning that the world does not necessarily work the way they think it does.
Central to the magical system that Moreno-Garcia creates for this story is the power of cinema and, in particular, the highly combustible silver nitrate film. Montserrat discovers the memoir of the Nazi occultist Wilhelm Friedrich Ewers, who likens the spectacle of movies to ‘sacrifice atop a pyramid’, and this book becomes a magical source book for Montserrat, allowing her to start to understand how Ewers used movies to create and amplify his magic:
Movies were interesting to Ewers because they seemed to bring together all of the four elements he relied on with his magic system. The sliver nitrate used in films came from the earth; the spooling film to him was like a river of images; and the carbon arc lamps used to project movies were close to torches in his estimation, and thus connected to fire. These elements were unified and perfect with the inclusion of sound, which he identified as the air element …
Films were also spectacles, and Ewers seemed fascinated by the idea of many people coming together to increase the power of the spell.
This explanation both epitomises and exposes the weakness of Silver Nitrate. The magic system that Moreno-Garcia creates is a complex one. And in order for Montserrat and Tristán to fight back, they need to understand and use it. But this requires a little too much exposition in the form of lengthy passages in which they either read about or are told about how the magic works. And this only comes after a fairly long set up. But once the action really kicks into gear, Moreno-Garcia delivers – there are jump scares, haunted buildings, powerful runes, seances, malevolent entities, evil cultists and magical reveals. And it all builds to a darkly magical climax.
In Silver Nitrate, Silvia Moreno-Garcia follows in the tradition of horror stories about the occult power of film that includes Theodore Roszak’s 1991 thriller Flicker and the Japanese classic The Ring (coincidentally also based on a book from 1991). But as always, she gives her action a historical Mexican setting and bases it around memorable local characters, and in doing so makes the story her own. So that she once again demonstrates that she can deliver page-turning and thought-provoking novels in any genre and register.

Another fantastic read from Silvia Moreno-Garcia!

Thanks so much to the publisher and NetGalley for letting me read and review.

Montserrat is a 38-year-old woman working as a sound editor for a Mexican studio; she's better at most of the men at her job, but sexism is holding her back. Her best friend, Tristan, is an actor struggling to get out from under the shadow of a car accident 10 years before that ruined his reputation and career. The two meet a retired horror movie director who claims that his career derailed after working on a cursed film with a Nazi occultist, and that he needs their help to reverse the curse. That's where the fun begins. Silver Nitrate is an unputdownable book with horror and thriller elements. Moreno-Garcia's best work yet.

Such an incredible and creepy journey through Mexico's B list horror film scene of the 90s. I enjoyed the care and research that went into this and the story was compelling and creepy in all the right places.

I so wanted to love Silver Nitrate and I so want to love Silvia Moreno-Garcia's novels in general, as they always have amazing, very different premises, and I do admire her short fiction. Unfortunately this is the second book of hers that I haven't finished (the other being Gods of Jade and Shadow) and so I'm not sure I'll be picking up anything novel-length from her again, however enticing it sounds. Silver Nitrate has all the ingredients of brilliant speculative horror. Set in Mexico City in the 1990s, it has two great, nuanced protagonists: Monserrat, a stubbornly independent, no-bullshit sound editor, and her childhood friend Tristan, a washed-up soap star. It also has a creepy hook: when Monserrat and Tristan encounter a cult horror director who stopped making films decades ago, the director claims he can change their lives if they help him complete the dubbing of a film made by a Nazi occultist on fragile silver nitrate. Sadly, not only is the pace of this novel incredibly slow (it takes a long time to even get to this inciting incident), even when genuinely frightening things happen, they somehow don't create the frisson that they should. Everything plays out with the same flat affect. This isn't helped by long sections where Monserrat just reads through old documents or does research - I was reminded of Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian, which promised vampiric thrills but was mostly pages and pages of found materials. This is such a shame, because Moreno-Garcia also has so many important, disturbing things to say about racial hierarchies in Mexico: as she mentions in the afterword, for example, she grew up with the eugenicist phrase 'mejorar la raza', or 'better the race', meaning that Mexicans should aim to marry lighter-skinned or whiter-looking people. Such a great novel in theory, but it didn't come together for me.

Thank you so much Netgalley for accepting my request to read and review this book early. I was beyond excited to read this one as I have seen so much hype for it, especially with it being an Illumicrate pick!

However.... sadly this one was such a flop for me.

Almost immediatly after starting this book, we are bombarded as readers with probably 100 references to various horror films from the 1950's-1980's and info into directors adn actors and editors etc....

And I both didnt get a single reference, nor was I impressed or needed the references to get teh point that the author was trying to make across which is that our protagonist is obsessed with these films and the work behind them

We are also introduced to the protagonists best friend, and his sad backstory regarding a dead ex girlfriend.

Honestly, the first 20% of this book contained not one intersting scene, conversation, starting point for any mystery or intrigue, or ANYTHING of interst to make me continue with the rest of the book. I felt like I was reading a textbook on hrror movie lore and while I personally do LOVE horror movies, this didnt even talk abou the movies themselves it jsut talked about what happened behind the curtains.

It felt like the author was going overkill to get the point across and did so much research she couldnt let anything go so she put EVERY reference into this book

I loved Mexican Gothic by this author, its in my top fav book of all time, But this was a completely different author honesty.

I really enjoyed Mexican Gothic, and I was so excited to read this. It has such a great premise, but sadly it fell the victim of word count for me. It was interesting to find out this was originally a short story, and this could have been a perfect book if it were simply shorter!
I can't say I overly liked the main characters either - Tristan and Momo. It's difficult to read a novel where you are not rooting for the protagonists. They both have interesting professions in the film industry, and we learn a lot about Tristan and what makes him HIM but Momo remained a bit of a 2D cardboard cut-out for me. Apart from being stubborn and feisty there weren't many personality traits given to her which is disappointing. I would have also loved to read more about the sound process and the film part, but that part was over quickly.
The premise was really interesting and the first half of the novel was great once it got going. But it fell flat because it just went for a bit too long with the goosechase, and I lost interest.
The whole occult part was excellent, the character of Ewers really came to life through his letter and the magic book. The final part of the book just felt like a children's ghost story.
There were some really great elements of the book, but the pacing wasn't quite right for me.

Dark, cult fun from Silvia Moreno-Garcia.
Moreno-Garcia always writes with so much individuality and completely with her own style and this is no different. If you enjoyed Mexican Gothic, you'll like this. This feels like a really fresh take on 'culty' fiction and something I hadn't read before - I'm seeing a real talent for genre-busting from Moreno-Garcia and I can't wait to see what she releases next.

I feel like this was partly wrong book, wrong time and I'm tempted to give it a reread at some point and see if I come to the same conclusion. Basically, the main characters in this book are childhood friends with a love of 50s era horror, which has devolved into each of them working in the film industry in some capacity. And the book itself mirrors the beats of old horror films (which I also enjoy tbh). What you have to remember about old films is that special effects were in their infancy so horror (and scifi) relied a lot on the camera cutting away and leaving what happened to the viewer's imagination. And there was also the Hays code, which for all its crushing of queerness in film and television, was also concerned with what level of horror and gore could 'decently' be shown on screen. Which means that by our standards the films now seem tame - or do they? There's a lot to be said for using someone's imagination against them. Anyway, I see what Moreno-Garcia was going for but I'm not sure it entirely worked. The result of being told the action meant that while I enjoyed this while I was reading it, when I put it down because life intervened, I felt no great inclination to pick it back up. I really like the character work and the premise is very cool. Ditto the setting. So maybe it was me? I can be very hit and miss on the author's work. Overall I kind of liked it but something didn't quite hit.

I DNF’d this one at 26% and came back to it a month or so later, this was a real struggle to get through. I’ve come to the conclusion SMGs books are hit and miss.

I am not a big fan of horror but this was a complete triumph and a good homage to the film industry and the horror movie era that it references.

The story follows two protagonists, one a sometime audio editor on movies and the other a former soap star who are best friends. I just want to say just how refreshing it is to have main characters in their thirties and older, in fact a good proportion of the characters were elderly. The actor finds out that one of their directorial heroes lives in his apartment building and both him and the editor go to dinner at this directors apartment. They expect to get some juicy tit-bits about old movies, but what they get is an offer to finish a cursed movie…and when they do, things go horribly wrong…

I mean this had everything you could want - a slow sense of dread, the paranormal, occult loving nazis, racial purity in South America - some of it was truly fascinating. Only thing I found was that I was much more interested in the back story than the current story, I think I would like to read the prequel to this. But it was good, a solid horror read from someone who is very critically acclaimed.

4 stars

DNF at 15%
I've tried many times to keep picking up this book, but it just isn't capturing my attention - which I'm so sad about, because I was really anticipating this book! The concept, cover, and my love of Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia all drew me in, but I was really struggling to be interested in the characters so far. I felt like I was listening to a conversation between other people enthusiastically discussing the history of Mexican cinema, particularly horror, and while a little interesting I just feel lost, and as though lists of information is washing over my head. Maybe a DNF for now, maybe a permanent DNF, I'm not sure.

Netgalley makes me provide a star rating, so I've chosen what best reflects my current feelings, but I have not read enough to comment on the book as a whole. For this reason I will not post to Goodreads.

Thankyou to Netgalley and Quercus Books, Jo Fletcher Books for a free e-arc in exchange of an honest review.

I really enjoyed this!
-Loved the setting
-main characters had a great friendship and i loved them both!
-Fast paced
-Older characters
-Satisfying ending

Only reason its not a 5 star is because i think it tied up a little too easy

Silvia Moreno-Garcia can write mysteries, horror, fantasy, historical fiction and always delivers an excellent book.
This one was a favorite of mine as there's some horror, a vivid description of Mexico in the 80s, humour and well rounded characters.
The horror part made me think about the 60s Hammer films and there's plenty of references to horror movies of the past.
I had fun and couldn't put it down as I followed the twists and the life of the characters
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Silver Nitrate
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Ebook
Published today’!
Review: Four stars

I love SMG's books, I first read Mexican Gothic last year and thought it was brilliantly creepy so I know she writes good horror and I was excited for this book and it did not disappoint!

Set in 90’s Mexico City this book follows Montserrat, an overlooked sound editor in a male-dominated industry, and her best friend Tristián, a former soap opera star with a tragic and messy past who both get involved with a neighbor’s scheme to complete a Na*i occultist magic film and then the creep factor starts to set in!

This book had a lot of Mexcian film history involved throughout and the technical aspects sounded researched although I admit I haven’t fact-checked anything but when you read the explanations and see photos taken on film using Silver Nitrate (check @silviamg.author insta!) and tell me you’re not also convinced!

This book starts out slow and gradually starts to edge ever stranger until the horrific reality sets in. I love this gradual type of pacing in a horror novel and I was sucked into the story especially once the pieces of the mystery surrounding the “magic film” started to be fleshed out. The characters are flawed and have a kinda toxic friendship/weird bisexual platonic relationship and are so compelling I constantly wanted to know what they did next. Montserrat is definitely my favourite character, I found her to be strong and forthright.

I enjoyed the description of that ominous oppressive silence you get in horror movies so I feel like this book would be best read as an audiobook. I normally only read audiobooks or physical books but I was too excited for SMG’s new book that I had to impulse request it on Netgalley!

SMG never misses, all of the books I’ve read by her have been great stories. Definitely pick this one up if you like a good horror/mystery/historical novel!

I was kindly gifted an ebook of this book from NetGalley, thank you to Quercus Books and NetGalley!

“Give me your hands, dearest brother and sister, for now we call upon the Lords of Air, the Princes in Yellow, to witness our rites.”

My thanks to Quercus Books Jo Fletcher Books for a review copy of ‘Silver Nitrate’ by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. I was also invited to take part in their publication day blog tour.

Ever since I read my first Silvia Moreno-Garcia novel in 2019, I have admired her storytelling. She moves effortlessly through a variety of genres and her novels always feel fresh rather than repeats of her previous successes. In this work of supernatural suspense she combines three subjects that interest me: the occult, gothic horror, and the film industry, specifically classic horror films such as those made by Hammer Studios.

In 1993, Montserrat is a talented sound editor, though she's left out of the boys' club running the film industry in Mexico City. She’s also all but invisible to her best friend Tristán, a handsome former soap opera star, even though she's been in love with him since childhood.

When Tristán moves to a new apartment building, he discovers that his new neighbour is cult horror director Abel Urueta. In conversations about films the legendary auteur relates a fantastical tale of a German occultist who sought to imbue magic into one of Urueta’s films utilising its highly volatile silver nitrate stock. The film, ‘Beyond the Yellow Door’, was never finished and Urueta swears that it was cursed and had resulted in his career vanishing overnight.

The director wants Montserrat and Tristán to help him finish the film by completing its soundtrack in the belief that it will lift the curse and also bring luck to all three of them. What could possibly go wrong? Montserrat and Tristán may not believe in the occult and curses, but horror buffs will know that such scepticism offers no protection against evil forces. No further details to avoid spoilers.

I found Montserrat such a relatable character including her unrequited love for Tristán. Many of Moreno-Garcia’s leads have been spectacular beauties, so having a quiet, plain girl was a welcome change. She also has a fierce intelligence and powerful will, essential qualities for a magician.

‘Silver Nitrate’ was deliciously creepy and Silvia Moreno-Garcia took her time introducing her characters before bringing in the supernatural elements in a manner that felt organic in relation to the narrative as a whole. That its Epigraph quoted ‘Casting the Runes’ by M.R. James seemed fitting as the understated literary horror within ‘Silver Nitrate’ was very much in this tradition. The film title, ‘Beyond the Yellow Door’ resonated for me with the Robert W. Chambers’ classic story, ‘The King in Yellow’.

The sense of authenticity was aided by her incorporating details of occult history including Aleister Crowley’s Rites of Eleusis theatrical productions that were also magical rituals. Indeed, the concept of utilising film as a vehicle for magic and spell casting is a natural progression from these ideas. 

In addition, Silvia Moreno-Garcia provides a free downloadable Book Club Kit via her website that provides background material on the novel, reading group questions, classic horror films mentioned in the text, her short story ‘Flash Frame’, a movie poster for ‘Beyond the Yellow Door’ and a Spotify playlist for ‘Silver Nitrate’.

Overall, ‘Silver Nitrate’ was an amazing read! It’s a well crafted slow burn horror novel that hooked me from the start. As I said above, I have enjoyed all of her novels and consider this one of her best.

Highly recommended.

I would happily call myself a fan of Silvia Moreno-Garcia and her genre adventures around largely but not exclusively Mexican setting. She writes pacey Gothic, creates the kind of compelling but flawed characters horror needs to thrive and she has a way with ideas. Silver Nitrate is, as its name suggests, a book about film, Mexican film, and the intersection between late eighties all-encompassing horror fandom, and old strands of Mexican horror. Since film is my other great love, you can imagine I ate this up greedily, and it doesn't disappoint. From its 20th Century Nazi magicians, to more indigenous traditions, Moreno-Garcia manages to create a solidly original chiller whilst feeling of its own tradition it talks about. It would make a terrific film itself, but prose is where it sings.

Montserrat is a slightly lame, slightly anti-social, very talented sound editor (we are already in Berbarian Sound Studio mode), a horror obsessive with one friend, Tristán - a vain and troubled ex-actor. He moves into the same building as a legendary actor-director and they all pal up, and talk about his fabled lost film. A film, shot on nitrate, whose producer (an escaped Nazi supernaturalist) believed would literally be its own spell, granting the wishes of those in the film. The ideas are all teased out naturally, and the magical theory of the communal act of watching and believing being akin to a mass seance is very seductive. There is a solid air of dread hanging around, as firstly they are excited to see the film, and latterly realise the powers that have been unleashed. And perhaps what it means and how to put an end to it.

What Moreno-Garcia is very good at (and that is most of the whole business of writing), is taking an old form, here something of an MR James ghost story, and making it feel naturalistic. Along with a lovely evocation of late 80's Mexico City, she makes all of this - no matter how far-fetched - seem real.She is also in touch with this world of cinema she talks of, both the US video nasties Montserrat edits and dubs by day, and that silver screen stuff of the forties and fifties, and the faded glamour that comes with it. It is almost too much of a treat to throw a Crowley-quoting Nazi in the mix. Throw the allure and danger of Nitrate in the mix, and its pretty much a book that was written specifically with me in mind,

Thank you to NetGalley and Quercus books for providing this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia has done it again. This is her 4th book I've read and I once again have remembered why I love her work: fully developed characters, narrative full of suspense, rich worldbuilding and realistic antagonists. While I had some problems getting into the story, after hitting the 15% mark I was hooked! I especially liked the dual narrative and that the main characters were nearing their 40s. I believe this book will be a favourite if you like old movies, mystery, badass female characters and the occult!

4.5 stars!

Silver Nitrate is a smart, scary and complex horror novel drawing on the legacy of classic films and books but with a sense of edginess all of its own as it unspools around the involvement of a (fictitious) Nazi occultist who flees to Mexico following WW2.

In Mexico City, Montserrat works as an editor at Antares, a firm specialising in audio for low-budget horror films. She loves her work but times are tough in 1993 with new techniques coming along and her pig of a boss favouring male editors, so she has time on her hands and a need for new projects.

Montserrat's childhood friend Tristán, a disgraced soap star, is in a similar situation with work hard to find since he was involved in a scandal some years before - a scandal that left him, at least in his own eyes, disfigured. So both friends are ready for some distraction and the prospect of redressing their misfortunes - although they often don't see eye to eye.

The bickering that ensues is just wonderful. These are people who know each other really well; who met I school; who got up to mischief as kids; who fell out and made up repeatedly; whose careers overlap and parallel one another; and yet who still don't understand each other, or themselves. In a sense it's Montserrat and Tristán against the world - in another it's Montserrat and Tristán against each other in a death match. All of that is further complicated when Tristán's new neighbour turns out to be famous director Abel Urueta, who stopped making films in the 60s with a particularly notorious horror production that is rumoured to have been suppressed.

So, - a director whose career spiralled downwards, a dead occultist and a washed up actor. Only Montserrat seems to be active in the industry, and the others need her help. But will she be able, and willing, to do what they want of her?

I loved this beautiful book. Whether evoking subtle, crawling dread, conjuring monstrous horrors, exploring the relationship between the Nazi past and the subtly prejudiced present, or just showing us 90s Mexico City as we follow Montserrat and Tristán go about their day-to-day - and less day-to-day - business, Silver Nitrate just shines. In making literal the idea of the magic of cinema it modernises the whole apparatus of traditional horror (I loved the take on MR James where a character is attacked by a murderous tablecloth) as well as portraying a full gallery of noir figures - the washed up actress, the director determined to come back none final time - and giving proper time and respect to all the figures you'd see before the camera.

Moreno-Garcia could well be a magician herself here, transmuting base elements of plot and character, and the conventions of horror and noir (look out for the trench coats!) into something that is unique, wonderful and - while chilling at times - actually a powerful evocation of friendship and love.