Review: `Abasteron House is named for the angel who rules the fifth hour after sunset.'
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 26, 2014
American author Paula Cappa deals with words. She has experience as a journalist for newspapers in New York and Connecticut, a freelance copywriter, editing health, business communications, magazines and news articles, newsletters and advertising copy, but her true love is writing both short stories and novels - that destination for words that satisfies her most. This book, NIGHT SEA JOURNEY was her debut novel and she has continued writing others since the publication of this book in 2012. From reading this isolated example of her talent it seems she has a secure future in her chose field of paranormal supernatural fantasy.Cappa has that special gift of being able to make the supernatural natural, so polished is her prose and ability to string together ideas and development of same in a sustaining suspenseful manner. Even as she describes supernatural imagery her descriptive sense makes the quasi-visible visible. And that is a talent that will draw even those who are not keen on supernatural stories into her fold. In the instance of this story she places a gifted painter (Kip Livingston by name, and a image creator by trade) in an isolated house (Abasteron House) on Horn Island off Rhode Island. We are lead to believe she lives alone until Cappa informs us of other occupants: `Many know Duma as the angel-prince of dreams, blessed with spiky blond hair and shocking green eyes. The perfection of the universe requires these messengers who, on occasion, assume physical bodies or borrow them from nature.' And there is the ominous firehawk. So even in her prologue she places the supernatural... Nightly Kip is visited by a dark nocturnal creature (the FireHawk) who transports her to terrifying places (the night sea journey of the title). Chicago priest Father Raymond Kera is sent by the church in exile to Horn Island and becomes enchanted by the beautiful and seductive Kip. When Kip's recurring nightmare penetrates his own dreams, Ray risks not only his sanity but also his very life to help her. Through the twists and turns of the plot Cappa manages to insert romance, paranormal apparitions, and psychological leanings that enhance that in other author's hands would be a traditional ghost story.Paula Cappa is a fine young writer and if NIGHT SEA JOURNEY is an indicator, we will be reading more about her. Grady Harp, May 14