Chanticleer Book Reviews

Tag: Occult/Fiction

BECOMING CRONE: Book 1 of The Crone Wars by Lydia M. Hawke – Paranormal, Urban Fantasy, Occult Fiction

There’s a darkness rising from the Otherworld in Lydia M. Hawke’s Becoming Crone, and only the Morrigan’s Crones can send it back. But For Claire Emerson, her first challenge is accepting the fact that she is a Crone.

On Claire’s sixtieth, friends and family come to celebrate her milestone birthday. But with her daughter-in-law Natalie giving out advice more suitable for an 80-year-old, her neighbor Jeanne’s annual gifting of a garden gnome, and her best friend Edie cracking wise and irreverent, Claire’s milestone is more like a millstone around her neck. Fresh off a divorce, in a funk, and seeking purpose in her life, her day is only brightened by her grandson Braden gifting her an antique pendant.

The owner of the antique shop, her neighbor Gilbert, wants to buy it back. Claire refuses for Braden’s sake and finds the pendant proves to have a value stranger than money. Other strange occurrences happen as well, including a strange, angry man, and protective crows. Determined to resolve this new mystery, Claire sets out to find the address.

And find it she does, after a long trek down a disused, heavily wooded, bramble-entangled road.

It’s a stone cottage, guarded by two beings destined to teach and protect her: a female gargoyle named Keven, and Lucan the rather charming werewolf. After much resistance—not to mention an attempt on her life—Claire agrees to stay the night.

At this point Claire is chalking up her fantastical experiences to a seemingly sudden onset of dementia. Despite her disbelief, Claire is sharp and likable, with an engaging voice and a gift for wry witticisms. “Not quite what I’d envisioned as a retirement plan,” she tells herself when she finally agrees to learn magick from Keven.

And she needs to learn magick fast! When the mages attack, the stakes become astronomic.

Claire collects her cat and moves into the cottage to begin her lessons. She finds her long-ago dabbling in Wiccan spells proves she already has the magick in her, but she needs to learn to control it. To Claire’s and Keven’s surprise, she finds she can tap into Air, Fire, Earth, and Water magick. Each Crone controls only one element, which means that Claire is the fifth and ultimate Crone, the Crone of Spirit.

As her training continues, she learns the evil she’s seen began in Arthurian times, when a Slavic god named Morok possessed the wizard Merlin and began disseminating darkness and deceit upon the world. Only the Morrigan and her Crones are capable of stopping him. But each time they try to rid themselves of him, a little of the world also falls with him.

Hawke ties this god of deceit to the lies and disinformation our world experiences today—a quiet reality check that helps ground the story. Morok’s mages even use bots to crawl the internet in search of the five pendants that, when used together, would destroy him forever.

Becoming Crone takes its time getting through Claire’s misgivings about turning sixty before it sets her on her true path, but Hawke has created such a lively cast of characters within a fluid and vivid environment, and the story never fails to intrigue.

Claire’s attraction to Lucan, and Edie’s disappearance, leave unanswered questions, and readers can look forward to both characters returning in the second installment of The Crone Wars series – A Gathering of Crones.

Women readers in particular will enjoy Becoming Crone for its dynamic representation of older female characters. After all, as Keven tells Claire, “All women are witches. Or at least, they have the capacity to be so.”

Becoming Crone by Lydia M. Hawke won Grand Prize in the 2021 CIBA Paranormal Awards for Supernatural Fiction.

March 5, 2025
ANNIHILATION: Book 2, Gehenna Series by Kaylin McFarren – Occult Fiction, Paranormal Romance, Occult Horror

Samara Daemonium tries to break free from her father’s control as the realms of Heaven and Hell prepare for war, in Kaylin McFarren’s erotic supernatural novel, Annihilation.

Lucinda, the daughter of Satan, rules Hell with an iron fist. She sits on the throne thanks in part to the angel/demon hybrid Crighton and his angel soulmate Ariel. However, power changed Lucinda. She no longer stands as a brighter future in Hell, but rather as a demagogue driving her demons to rise up in battle against the hosts of Heaven. Crighton struggles between his loyalty to Lucinda, and his responsibility for his family—especially his pregnant soulmate. He doesn’t yet know the depths of Lucinda’s deception.

Crighton tries to hold his family together by force, as Ariel gives birth to Cassius and a stillborn Caleb. But Samara chafes under her lack of freedom, kept in a secluded cabin to hide her from the forces of Hell. She turns to her uncle Tyrus for help, and when dark forces descend on her family, she steps up to defend them. While Samara can help to save her parents and brother, she doesn’t see the danger to herself until it’s found her. Lucifer, returned to physical form in the body of Samara’s first love, drags her to Hell and the palace of cruelty he prepared for her.

McFarren illuminates the fantastical stretches of Hell in tactile, colorful description.

Torture, sex, and supernatural powers mingle together in an otherworldly display. Witches take vengeance on the demon who killed their sister, Lucinda consumes the souls of magically gifted beings, and Samara learns of a bloodline with incredible abilities. But amongst all the magic and hell spawn, themes of family and identity ground the central characters.

Lucifer fights the political influence of the Knights of Darkness, strengthening his hold on the realm of demons. Meanwhile, a group of cambions calling themselves the Crows try to stop an apocalyptic war from breaking out. And the Daemonium family fall into the sights of them all.

Though Samara yearns for her freedom, she fears that she won’t have a family to return to. Has her brother Cassius taken her place, left her forgotten? When Lucifer abuses and assaults her in Hell, when she’s abandoned by her father Crighton for two months, she can rely on next to nobody. Only Tyrus, now imprisoned and tortured as well, keeps her sane.

From the depths of Hell, Samara will face a destiny laid out since far before her birth.

Can she really save the world—more than one world, in fact—from Lucifer’s power mongering? The great Red War looms on the horizon, and Samara finds that in the end, she can’t even be sure of herself.

Throughout this story, readers will reel at Lucifer’s horrors, cheer for the protection of the bonds of love, and anxiously await their answers as to how the multi-faceted story lines of the series many characters will come together. Annihilation proves a suspenseful read. The characters stand larger than life, their personalities remaining solid from beginning to end.

December 31, 2021
A HAND of VENGEANCE (Call of Vengeance Book 4) by John Stafford – Occult Fiction, Espionage Thriller, Metaphysical Fiction

In A Hand of Vengeance, the fourth volume in John Stafford’s Vengeance series, the Darkness stops at nothing to destroy Brady, the boy who can call the angels, and continue its never-ending war against The Holy Mother and Her forces of good on earth.

More of an action novel and less of a polemic than previous novels in the series (A Prayer of Vengeance – Book 1, A Sword of Vengeance – Book 2, and A Song of Vengeance – Book 3) the book begins in 1983 with the intended assassination of Pope John II by four girl assassins trained by Gudren Himmler, daughter of Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler, introduced in the previous book and an actual historical figure. Without intervention, the nefarious plan might just succeed.

The Darkness is just getting started, including the murder of Mother Theresa in India come to fruition. Fans of the series will find the fates of key figures of great interest include Brady’s grandfather, Giovanni, the Vatican’s Father Anthony, and Brady’s young daughter Grace, whose special powers become increasingly crucial to the saga. Equally riveting revelations include how the forces of Good influenced global decisions and influenced cultural icons, including the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” and J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

Evil moves on to assassinations.

Among the more chilling developments, a facility in India tortures innocent orphan girls. The workers extract the girls’ blood at the peak of their terror to produce a human blood-based “fountain of youth” elixir consumed by rich and powerful people worldwide. Dining on the flesh of young children is also a featured meal for Darkness followers.

With time, 20-something Brady leads the worldwide fight against the Darkness, with the Vatican and several nations backing his efforts. The latest mission ll takes them to London to interrogate Gudrun Margarete Elfriede Emma Anna Burwitz’s (a.k.a. Gudrun Himmler’s) right-hand man. Then the team travels to Paris, where they destroy a chateau where trafficked children died in front of audiences for their “elixir.” One more battle between the Light and Darkness emerges in Calcutta, India, but this one does not leave the forces of Good untouched. The consequences are monumental, the loss of lives for the Light inconsolable. This time, Brady and the Light will not save everyone, but a new family emerges with Brady’s powers to carry on the war against evil.

Stafford weaves historical events into his storytelling.

While alternate history plays a role in every Vengeance book, this latest book sees events from the assassination attempt on President Reagan to the near-fatal bombing of Margaret Thatcher as chess pieces in the war of the Darkness against the Light. While reading previous novels would offer a greater understanding of the events in this book, readers who come across this stand-alone novel and crave militant Catholic occult fiction will find it a good read all on its own.

August 23, 2021
The MADWOMAN of PREACHER’S COVE by Joy Ross Davis – Paranormal Ghost Thrillers, Occult Fiction, Witch/Wizard Thrillers

Award-winning author, Joy Ross Davis’ latest work, The Madwoman of Preacher’s Cove, ventures beyond the paranormal into the surreal. Like Medusa on a bad hair day, the lives of characters are intertwined and twisted in a snaky snarl of conflicting human desires, terrifying inexplicable events, and the lingering afterlives of ancient, supernatural beings.

Davis gifts us with a 21st-century legend, replete with mythological themes and creatures, and snippets of folklore and superstition melded with documented vagaries of weather, obscure herpetology, and creates a mystical potion worthy of Circe. In other words, Davis gives us a thrilling read!

Rumors about suspicious deaths have put Preacher’s Cove, Alabama, a small, historic town notorious for powerful, killer storms, on the map. Hap Murray, Huntsville’s Channel 12 field reporter, with family ties to the Cove, arrives in town on assignment, armed with only limited knowledge of the town’s history of inexplicable deaths. The rumors speculate that the local pastor may be involved.

Hap meets the beautiful, provocative owner of Cove’s Inn, Libby Arbuckle, when he first arrives. She is a woman with many secrets—a woman with a history. When Libby, along with Chief of Police Riggs, join Hap in the search for the truth, their ensuing relationship proves integral to Hap’s investigation.

During his stay, Hap experiences supernatural events that sometimes make him question his sanity, and he already has issues. Like PTSD, he is plagued by periodic, severe headaches accompanied by fragmented, bizarre visual and auditory hallucinations along with phatomasia, he smells things that are not there, which renders him anxious, fearful, and confused. These are never far from his mind, along with the guilt he feels over losing the love of his life and their child through his own failure to act.

Little does Hap know that the affliction and emotional angst he experiences are pieces of the puzzle he’s challenged to solve. Or, that when Preacher’s Cove welcomes him, a chain of events are triggered that change the shape of residents’ lives forever, in ways that no one could ever predict.

Joy Ross Davis has crafted an eerie, twisted plot where reality is warped—slightly out of focus, keeping the reader off-balance and engaged. The Madwoman of Preacher’s Cove satisfies dreamers’ needs for a taste of magic, the desire for good to triumph over evil, and the reassurance of a benevolent all-powerful being that is always available.

The Madwoman of Preacher’s Cove won Grand Prize in the CIBAs for Paranormal Fiction.

October 20, 2020
SOUL SEEKER by Kaylin McFarren – Occult Horror, Paranormal Romance, Occult Fiction

The realms of demons and angels clash, as the possibility of romance, plunges the beings of Hell into chaos. Kaylin McFarren’s Soul Seeker follows the otherworldly set as they flee for their lives, uncover millennia-old secrets about one another, and face the possibility of love in a very dangerous world.

But first, the demon, Crighton, wreaks havoc on his human target, a man named Poe, devastating the man and his family. You could say, Crighton’s at home collecting wicked souls for his boss, Lucifer. His villain persona is put into question when he meets the angel, Ariel. At first, Crighton believes the angelic Ariel would make an excellent prize for the prince of darkness, as the demon is well aware that his master adores ruining pretty things. However, when an undeniable attraction emerges between them, they wrestle with each other, pitting strength against strength. Beware any who would do anything to tear these two apart—that would spell certain death.

McFarren leads us into Hell through the mechanisms of secret societies and across the earth’s crust, ever raising the stakes for her leading duo. Crighton and Ariel discover what a union between angel and demon truly means, and what has been conveniently left out of their histories.

Soul Seeker paints an intimate view of a supernatural world, seen through the eyes of characters who know it well—though not so well that there aren’t mysteries to yet uncover. In McFarren’s world, demons are more than just evil beings, but as those who suffer, desire, and ones with whom we empathize. More than any character, Crighton embodies the conflict between cruelty and mercy. Angels aren’t monolithic either. Indeed, McFarren portrays her cast of heavenly dwellers with their own doubts and failures that make them real and emotionally affecting characters, especially as Ariel learns that Crighton isn’t quite the monster she first sees him as.

Ariel and Crighton run through a thrilling and fast-paced narrative, full of ever-present tension and half-victories. The story keeps a brisk pace, and Kaylin McFarren builds on this momentum as the pages seem to turn by themselves, creating a sophisticated and remarkable otherworldly conclusion.

At its heart, this story is concerned with the personal thoughts and feelings of its characters. Crighton and Ariel become the emotional heart of the story as they slowly try to grow to accept each other, and change to meet their new challenges, but many of the characters are given space to grow and understand one another, providing a heartwarming journey alongside the fighting of demons, the family turmoil, and the enticing mysteries of Soul Seeker. In short, Kaylin McFarren has done it again! Those looking for a new, otherworldly thriller series, need look no further than Soul Seeker.

Order here.

October 7, 2020