Revenant by Olivia Lorenz

[reviews_and_ramblings]

At the beginning of the twenty century, Jack is a young Englishman in Santorini; he is following a dig near a church and he makes a stunning discovery: the tomb of a man; the burial seems to be prehistoric, but there are remains from all over the age, till the last, an eighteen century coin. The peasants are murmuring of evil, the tomb was not in a holy place, and the body was chained. But Jack is not a man who can be scared by superstition, and so he takes with him the skeleton, actually freeing it from its "eternal" rest.

Then Jack begins to receive strange letters from a man named Belas, a man who promises to Jack fame and fortune in exchange of very little from him: his blood.

The story now resembles a bit the myth of Eros and Psyche, with Eros pretending by his spouse that she never looks at him when he visits her at night. Belas asks to Jack to wait for him at night, blindfolded and naked, ready to satisfy Belas' desires. But probably Belas also satisfies Jack's desires, since the sexual attention of Belas are not unwelcomed by Jack. And even when Jack realizes that Belas is killing people in the village, he can't blame the man who is searching his vengeance; in the contrary, Jack offers himself as weapon for Belas' vengeance.

But then enters Gabriel, a young doctor. Gabriel fancies Jack, and he is convinced that Jack is suffering from madness... Belas is not real, it's a figment of Jack's mind, and what Jack imputes to Belas, in reality are Jack's actions... who is right? Is it possible that this is not a paranormal event, but only the oddity of an ill mind?

The story is very well written; it's a very good mix of paranormal and historical, letting the reader wondering till the end about the true nature of the tale. In the end Jack is only a man with a deep need of love, a need he brings with him since he was a child, a need that he tries to fulfill in everyway... Belas, Gabriel, are only tools for his trìhirst of love.

Belas could be real and if he is real, he is a man who has suffered for so long that his mind is cloudy with pain; if he isn't real, he is only the true nature of Jack, the passionate and outspoken man who Jack has never had the courage to be.

Gabriel is the man who bears the sin of his fathers. He is not a bad man, but he is too avid of fame; probably he, in a way, really loves Jack, but he is not the man who can save Jack, he is not enough strong.

At almost 300 pages, Revenant is an historical / paranormal / mystery romance... all genre are mixed together in a very good way.

http://samhainpublishing.com/books/revenant

Amazon Kindle: Revenant

Amazon: Revenant

Reading List:

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Cover Art by Anne Cain

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for the review. You perceive it in a very interesting way, a way I hadn't considered before, but which makes a lot of sense: Belas as a mirror for Jack. Gabriel was always a cipher but I'd not thought about Belas being one, too.

Thank you, it's a fascinating perspective.

- Olivia

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

You are welcome Olivia. It's always a pleasure when an author says that I "understood" the book in a different way. Elisa