The Celestine Room

Title: The Celestine Room
Author: Jared Rackler
Publisher: Torquere Press
Buy Link: Buy Link The Celestine Room, Torquere Press
Genre: M/M Paranormal
Length: Short Story
Rating: 5 stars

A Guest Review by Sammy

Review Summary: A riveting sip of a story about necromancers and vampires that leaves the reader jonesing for more.

Blurb: In the city of Melinoe, necromancer Nikos Aristos summons the dead for king and country. Yet, in the frozen depths of winter, bonds are easily shattered and he may yet find himself under the spell of the very thing he once commanded. Love knows no heartbeat between a necromancer and a vampire.

Review: A new author. A short, short story with more action and back ground information than can possibly be believed. A new world that is merely glimpsed yet so real that you can feel the heat of the crowd gathered in the room. Characters that capture your imagination and fix you there, making you yearn for just a few more lines of prose, a few more pages of text, more…just more.

“He despised the mortal men that would never have him for fear of his close proximity to death and he resented the feeling of contentment that came with Rune’s touch.”

Nikos is a conflicted man. A necromancer by trade, his black magic allows him to communicate with the dead. Many misunderstand him, revile him and steer well clear of him, yet the undead are drawn to him. So, when King Lykanos decrees that the “Nosferatu”, the vampires will now be tolerated and live within the city due to the aid they gave the country of Serenae during the war, it is Nikos who understands all that means. In amongst the vampires is one who claimed Nikos before and if he has his way, Rune will have Nikos again.

I am still reeling a bit from this mere 20 page story, The Celestine Room. Author Jared Rackler manages to do so much in this short space, these few pages, that I am almost giddy to think what he will accomplish with a longer novella. The way in which he uses his prose to paint you right into the action at hand. No word is wasted here, each carefully placed to give you a heightened sense of the scene the author is laying out. The danger that the vampires, in particular, Rune, represents is palpable. Yet from this cold, dead creature, there is also a sense of such deep longing to be loved, to be with Nikos, at his side, forever.

Nikos finds himself faced with a choice that he never wanted. If he dares to love Rune, he will be hounded by his colleagues whose curiosity about the Nosferatu is endless. Not to mention, he is already a bit of a social pariah and consorting with the undead is not a way to win friends. So, we sit alongside this man and hear his tortured thoughts and feel his longing.

The beauty of this new author is his ability to make each moment one in which we participate with the story, drawn into the drama he unfolds on the page. I am so impressed by Jared Rackler. I encourage you to pick up The Celestine Room and immerse yourself in the world this author has so painstakingly created for us.