A dead nine-year-old girl. An illicit magical tool. He needs both, as his mother is unknowingly killing him...Necroti Whicker Campbell’s mother is lost in her grief over recent deaths in the family. She’s feeding off his life force, depleting him. After a year, he’s reached his point of failure. With only a month’s worth of strength remaining, he devises a plan to save himself and his mother using a recently deceased nine-year-old girl, an illegal-to-possess Hatcher key, and the help of his morally challenged mentor. But from the start, his plan begins to unravel.
To her shock, Investigator Suzin Rollings’s well of telepati ability has run dry. With mandatory retirement looming, she faces a bleak, uncertain future, alone and adrift. Then she’s tasked with her last video evidence exposes the theft of a nine-year-old girl’s body from her casket the morning of her funeral. Determined to end with an unquestioned success, she’s soon on the trail of two necroti who have violated every oath they’ve sworn to uphold.
In five days, their paths will collide and redefine what it means to be alive...
Charles Brass works as an imaging technologist in the small city hospital where he lives, some thirty miles west of Minnesota's Twin Cities. He's been published in one short story collection and has self-published to no great fanfare a handful of novels, novellas, and short stories. Writing has been his passion for more than twenty years. Writing well has always been his dream.
I received the audiobook version of this story from the author in exchange of a honest review.
An interesting story… It has a touch of paranormal because, in this story’s universe, certain abilities of people are exploited. For example: The MC, Whicker, is a necroti, a person who, using his own energy, helps souls to “move on” (after people die, in some cases, their souls linger rather than moving on to the afterlife, so the necroti helps them to walk to the “light” and leave). His mother is an enchati, a person with magical powers who can cast spells (don’t image a Harry Potter thingie with magic wands and flying brooms, it’s much less elaborate, but it’s a kinda magic anyway). And there’s a third character, this police detective, a telepati, who has some sort of (you guessed right!) telepathic abilities and can tell whether witnesses/criminals are lying to her or can pick a lead almost out of nowhere only by using a special “intuition”.
If you are fond of zombies, there are some of them here. If a soul does not “move on”, then there’s a chance the soul may go back into their original body and turn into an undead. Chances are this undead goes mental and ends up eating you or your dog, but not always. Watch out anyway.
Whicker’s mother, the enchanti, is grieving because husband and her daughter (Whicker’s sister) die almost one after the other (different reasons), so she wants to die too. She can’t (because of her magical powers) so her willingness to die is focused on Whicker who is, slowly albeit relentlessly, losing his vital energy so important for his necrotic job. You may understand Whicker wants to bring his mum out this state on the double, so he concocts this spooky plan of using an undead (a friend of his arranges the whole thing), a nine-year-old girl whom he plans to disguise as his dead sister to shock his mother. Pretty creative, isn’t it?
It’s here where the police detective appears because stealing dead bodies and forcing their souls back into them is a crime—no wonder. Things get even worse because the girl’s body starts decomposing—if you like gore, this is the right story, there’s plenty.
I won’t spoil the story for you, but I will certainly recommend it. It’s fast paced. It’s creative in a The Adams Family macabre fashion. It’s spooky, and has a touch of black humour. Talking about the audiobook, I so enjoyed it. It’s well read and well performed. The voice actor is good at recreating the different characters, even the zombie girl.
So, go for it if you like the macabre that is not straight forward horror, splashed with cute nine-year-old decaying zombies who eat dogs… raw.
The author Charles Brass always surprises you with his amazing imagination with his unrelated stories every time. A person will do a lot for family but this one is really out there.
Excellent narration by Ron McKenzie-Lefurgey for each of the characters in this creation.
Brass is a new author to me so wasn't sure what to expect. I did find the beginning a little confusing but it settled and I finally got to follow a great story. The author did a great job with the storyline however there were a few typos here and there. Great read overall.
In a world where people accept that overnormal people have value. Necroti help the dead people and pets find rest. Enchantii, Telekenati, Cursurarii all have purposes . Hopefully they can do the right thing
I liked how the officer didn't charge the boy for taking the dead body but how the boy didn't exactly let his mom know that the dead girl wasn't his sister. Honestly really great book!
>I received this book from the author and from Paranormal Romance and Authors That Rock.
>This book is a stand alone fantasy short story.
>The story assumes, from page one, that the reader will buy into the differences involved in this fantasy world. Nothing is really explained, but after awhile you realize the differences in the paranormal abilities and how this society forces certain abilities to be utilized, by taking away free will.
>We meet Whicker, a 21 year old man, who lost his sister in a car accident. Ever since the accident, his mother, Bronshea, has secluded herself in her room, trying to die. Add in the paranormal element and the plot is vastly different from the previous sentence. Whicker is a necroti. He works for an agency that helps souls move on. It takes a lot of his own energy to do this. His mother is an enchant. She casts spells. Bronshea wants to die, but her enchanti skills will not allow this. Instead, she "sips" energy from her son, slowly killing him.
Whicker comes up with an elaborate plot to trick his mother into coming to,peace with his sisters death. Afterward, she would want to live again, and would quit slowly killing him. This plot involves an "alive" undead girl. The descriptions of the decomposition of her body is very graphic. The author also uses a strange preface to every word the girl says. He uses Uuh or Wuuh, before her words. It was confusing to me. Was she saying Uuh or Wuuh? Was she thinking it? Was Whicker hearing it? Seemed superfluous to me.
I originally thought Bronshea could not help sipping her son's energy. I thought her free will to die, was being over-ridden by her paranormal abilities. There is a scene, though, where Whicker wants his mom to authorize a money transfer and she refuses to do it. He uses extra energy to put up a shield to block her from sipping from him. Bronshea is furious and transfers the money. He lets down the shield and she begins sipping again. This shows me she knows she is killing her son. I lost any sympathy I had for her and actually wanted Whicker to shield her and have her die. The whole story is based upon sympathy for the mom and Whicker, but that one scene destroys the sympathy.
> This book is for a young adult to adult audience. There is no sex or language, just descriptions of gore.