Product Description
Camille MacTavish is a seventeen-year-old runaway escaping an abusive home life with a stolen magic dragon in the pocket of her jeans. Which could be fun, if the dragon didn't attract all the wrong people.
The magical trinket (a netsuke in the shape of a dragon) isn't what it seems. Although Camille thinks it's a luckpiece she stole as a souvenir from her last "ride," Philip, it's actually the protrusion into this dimension of a powerful magical entity from another plane of existence. Philip is a sorcerer, and he sets out to track her down, retrieve it, and kill her (thereby gaining power through sacrificing her to his personal demons.) Once she realizes what's happening, Camille begins running for her life.
The magic she unwittingly wields (after the "luckpiece" is attuned to her) but cannot control gets out of hand, and the battle becomes far larger and more perilous--not only for Camille, but for the friends she has made on the road and at the Renaissance festival where she found work. Worse, she's having to fight the magic because it may be capable of controlling her--which could lead her down the path that Philip chose. She and her new friends she met on the road (the disenfranchised) must defeat the dark forces quickly to prevent a rending of the very fabric of space-time.
Some may call the subject matter "gritty," but it's realistic; the desperation felt by some teens who feel they have no choice but to leave home to escape the abuse (and it is never as simple as "go to foster care" or "call CPS") and the issues they face are only sidelights here, but what there is, the author faces head-on. Camille may start out as somewhat of an antihero (as the book opens, she's shoplifting food and cigs), but readers quickly learn that at the core, we're all much more the same than we are different, and that there are always reasons for the ways people act. There's not a pat happy ending, either, but is there always, in life? Teens and adults alike can enjoy this crossover paranormal/dark urban fantasy that encompasses several points of view.
The magical trinket (a netsuke in the shape of a dragon) isn't what it seems. Although Camille thinks it's a luckpiece she stole as a souvenir from her last "ride," Philip, it's actually the protrusion into this dimension of a powerful magical entity from another plane of existence. Philip is a sorcerer, and he sets out to track her down, retrieve it, and kill her (thereby gaining power through sacrificing her to his personal demons.) Once she realizes what's happening, Camille begins running for her life.
The magic she unwittingly wields (after the "luckpiece" is attuned to her) but cannot control gets out of hand, and the battle becomes far larger and more perilous--not only for Camille, but for the friends she has made on the road and at the Renaissance festival where she found work. Worse, she's having to fight the magic because it may be capable of controlling her--which could lead her down the path that Philip chose. She and her new friends she met on the road (the disenfranchised) must defeat the dark forces quickly to prevent a rending of the very fabric of space-time.
Some may call the subject matter "gritty," but it's realistic; the desperation felt by some teens who feel they have no choice but to leave home to escape the abuse (and it is never as simple as "go to foster care" or "call CPS") and the issues they face are only sidelights here, but what there is, the author faces head-on. Camille may start out as somewhat of an antihero (as the book opens, she's shoplifting food and cigs), but readers quickly learn that at the core, we're all much more the same than we are different, and that there are always reasons for the ways people act. There's not a pat happy ending, either, but is there always, in life? Teens and adults alike can enjoy this crossover paranormal/dark urban fantasy that encompasses several points of view.
About the Author
Shalanna Collins has been writing since she could hold a crayon. She is a graduate of Plano Senior High and Southern Methodist University, and has worked as a software engineer, math tutor, and soft-serve cone maker at Dairy Queen (where she perfected that little curl on top). She and her husband live happily in a northern suburb of Dallas, Texas, with their two beloved pets: a yappy Pomeranian and Shalanna's elderly mother. She blogs at shalanna.livejournal.com.
