I am a huge fan of Emily Carroll, and very much like When I Arrived at the Castle, which might best be described as a lesbian horror fairy tale. Here’s a bit of what happens: A cat-eared human visits a Countess’ castle to kill her. We don’t know why, but she isn’t the first to try. She is surprised to find that the Countess is waiting for her. The cat-girl is led to a series of (red) doors, behind each a tragic fairy tale she must navigate to survive and remain sane. It’s an ode here to literature, to fairy tales that scare and seduce us. What happens later is the sex part, which gets murky and complicated, as in dreams. The Countess is a vampire, a femme fatale, alluring and dangerous and creepy, the flame to the cat-girl’s moth. But how can we resist her attractions?! And she’s a shape-changer: one of the most alarming and amazing sequences happens as cat-girl watches the Countess at her dressing table. Successfully scary! So it’s dark erotic fantasy in Carroll’s signature black and white and (bloody) red. A touch of gothic, certainly. Decadent in the way of nineteenth century “decadent” art. A nod to things like Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, after which she takes off in a swirlingly dangerous and delicious direction the Bronte women could not have taken (but possibly allude to). And complicated, in the ways of the best of fantasy, which leave us some space to dream in our own heads and maybe leave us a bit confused if we try to explain it all. Which is to say it prioritizes atmosphere over plot. All about mysterious, intense feelings, in that Poe/Bronte romantic sense. At the intersection of violence and eroticism, which means it is not for kiddies. And the art style fits the open, reader-based narrative of fantasy; Carroll almost never uses a panel structure at all, favoring (bloody) splash pages in rhapsodic fashion. It’s a poetic structure that fits a “tale of mystery and imagination,” one that allows for the “grotesque.”Maybe for my tastes (ahem!) I like the (slightly) more conventional Through the Woods tales, but from light fantasy and YA (her illustrated Speak) to dark horror, Carroll can do it all, the best there is. And you can find her stuff, wonderful short shorts, on her website for free sampling, too.I guess I rate this as 4 stars because I think the degree of confusion I still have after two readings is greater than I prefer, but the art is 5 stars, for sure.