Rags and Old Iron
Lorelei Shannon
Juno Books
Reviewed by Jenny Salyers
College
student Amy Sullivan is living a fairly normal, boring life. She spends
her
time attending classes and daydreaming about romance with handsome
pirate
captains and a dark and brooding lord of the manor. However, her life
takes a
turn when her nightly dreams start turning into nightmares, and
hallucinations
start creeping into her daily life. Amy’s friends express concern as
she starts
unraveling both physically and mentally.
A
conversation with her friend Xavier, a Yaquai mystic, brings forth the
idea
that maybe Amy’s dreams are in fact memories that Amy repressed during
her
childhood. When Amy is rescued from being sexually assaulted by a
familiar
figure, her whole reality is thrown into turmoil. Her rescuer is Rags,
a swamp demon,
that Amy befriended as a six year old while visiting her grandparents
in Florida. To her six-year
old self, Rags was her Peter Pan. He was an elfin boy with the power to
transform his flesh and control things with his thoughts. However, to
Amy’s
nineteen-year old self, Rags is a malevolent presence. His declarations
of love
and intentions of possessing Amy are disturbing to her, as is the very
evilness
of his nature. Amy and her friends are joined by Louis, a voodoo
priest, and
another friend of six year old Amy. His power combined with the
protective
powers of Xavier can help Amy in her quest to free herself of Rags’
presence.
But is the power and love of her friends enough to save her from the
evil thing
that loves her as well?
Rags
and Old Iron is a recent offering by Juno Books, a new imprint of
Wildside Press
specializing in paranormal romances. Rags and Old Iron takes readers on
a
journey from Arizona to Florida, and pulls
the mystical and magical into modern
life. I was impressed with how full the plot was without being
overwhelming.
The story resonates with magic, romance, and a sense of impossible
things come
to life.
Lorelei
Shannon is the author of Vermifuge and Other Toxic Cocktails. A
collection of
dark fantasy and horror short stories published by Wildside Press. She
lives
outside of Seattle and spends
her time when not writing being a goth mamma to her two boys and
restoring her 1947 Cadillac
hearse, Annabelle Lee