Draakensky: A Supernatural Tale of Magick and Romance

By Paula Cappa

Crystal Lake Publishing (September 27, 2024)

Review by The Horror Zine Staff Reviewer Jon R. Meyers

Buy the book HERE

You know how sometimes when you’re out in the wild at a book store perusing the barrage of colorful book titles flooding the shelves, all with their magical words tucked away behind a front and back cover, and something about it immediately catches your eye? Maybe it’s a blurb or two from someone you know or trust. Perhaps, it’s the striking cover art that subconsciously builds suspense and intrigue unknowingly.

You ever notice how some books seem to speak to you more than others? As if they’re somehow louder than the others that surround them? Like it’s an entire otherworld once it meets the palms of your hands, a neat little package written in such a way that the words really begin to connect with you on a higher level as they pull you in, craft, and shape an entirely different meaning the more you read it; almost like it’s….magic. 

Paula Cappa’s Draakensky: A Supernatural Tale of Magick and Romance is just that: a powerful, timeless piece of dark fiction that is just as much a work of art as the artful content found within its magickal pages. The author’s attention to every detail throughout the entirety of the book is well-researched, written as top-notch, and very much on display here in terms of overall creativity. From a mysterious gothic riverside town and windmill setting in Bedford, New York, this novel contains deep character development, factual magick, Celtic witchcraft, and is a beautifully haunting supernatural tale centered around a slow-burn plot. The story is constructed with a handful of mix-mashed genres that fall somewhere underneath the dark fantasy, mystery, and horror umbrella.

The author manages to keep the reader turning the pages quickly in anticipation from page one to find out what happens next as Charlotte Knight, a thirty-year-old sketch artist and illustrator from a big-time publishing company in Chicago, Illinois, who has been commissioned to illustrate a number of works by the legendary poet, Rainer Maria Rilke.

The client (one of the publishing company’s top clients) is a mysterious seventy-four-year-old elderly woman by the name of Jaa Morland. Morland lives in the mysterious gothic, riverside town of Bedford, New York. She lives in the Draakensky estate, a haunted windmill with a cozy little cottage nearby that houses more than just dark remnants of the past.

Charlotte is to travel and stay with Morland until the collection has been illustrated and completed, which we as the reader eventually discover may be more of a daunting task than it sounds, because Jaa Morland is a quirky, bitter, eclectic, dreamy, and artful old soul who is by no means a stranger to getting her way. Morland is as stubborn and bitter as they come in her old age, but there’s something intriguing and mysterious about her. Something more secretive than the way she speaks deep and evocatively on the subjects of fine art and classic literature. Something magical, perhaps?

Charlotte must see it to believe it, and once she does, the supernatural occurrences begin to catch her attention immediately as she finds herself wanting to know more and more to get to the bottom of it, even if the stakes are high and dangerous.

When working on Rilke’s Les Roses, we as the reader discover Morland’s overall bitterness and the deep connection the author’s piece has to the client’s deceased sister, Heida. The puzzle begins when Morland throws Charlotte’s first sketches straight into the fireplace and tells her that the images she illustrated weren’t as her sister would have drawn or envisioned them. She shares this fact in a matter-of-fact repulsion by cryptically stating that, “Ghosts make sense of life. Do they not?”

As much as Charlotte wants to quit and leave, she knows she can’t. She needs to finish the job at hand if she wants to land that promotion she’s been promised back home in Chicago once the Rilke project is on her resume. Even if this means that she must stay here in Draakensky against her better judgment, face her fears, and illustrate a ghost for the bitter, old Jaa Morland.

Through various social interactions, Charlotte begins to connect the dots behind all the strange occurrences past and present. Is it Heida that is still haunting and keeping an eye over Draakensky even in the afterlife? Why were she and Jaa notoriously known as the Bedford Bird Sisters? What secrets does the river truly hold? Who is responsible for all these murders? Will anyone ever find the truth and solve the mystery?

Throughout an important sequence of romantic encounters and supernatural events reminiscent of the way subtle clues are often executed within the plot structure of mystery novels, the author manages to introduce us as the reader to the underlying magick of their work here in Draakensky.

Cappa does this brilliantly, creatively, and swiftly with a handful of subtle clues that contain, in my opinion, the overall brilliance of their work here in Draakensky. The author uses a mixture of well-researched and factual magick practices, witchcraft, Celtic lore, and more, which is quite the feat as we all know this is not always the case in many works of genre fiction. The author manages to creatively use these factual concepts of different magickal practices ranging from pre-Christian pagan era nature magick, river magick, owl, wolf, and river magick.

Cappa ties in the prior brilliantly and uses a variation of the term Frau Holle that rings true to not only the magickal content within the book, characters, and their development, but also as a unique metaphor that manages to tie everything in the book together with the inclusion of a meta narrative reminiscent of the predominate genre she as the author is using to craft, tell, and share this timeless tale with us as the reader. These concepts of magick are interwoven beautifully in a tapestry of delight as the story continues to unfold alongside a series of haunting supernatural events and occurrences, keeping us as the reader more than engaged with the plot throughout the remainder of the book as the magick literally unfolds before our very eyes, and keeps us as the reader wanting and needing to know what happens next until the very end.

All in all, if you’re on the lookout for a book that is different, unique, and stands out loudly from the rest, Draakensky: A Supernatural Tale of Magick and Romance has you covered in more ways than one. From haunting supernatural occurrences, a gothic setting that is dark and poetic, an assortment of mix-mashed genres, factual magick, nature, witchcraft, Arthurian legend, Celtic lore, fine art, classic literature, horror, fantasy, romance, mystery, and more. Highly recommended.