Apricot Brandy-Lynn Cesar

Apricot Brandy
Lynn Cesar
Juno, Apr 2008, $6.99
ISBN: 9780809572045

Decades have passed since Karen Fox returned to her family’s farm; twenty years since she walked out on the man who was supposed to protect her, but instead sexually assaulted her. Now her father is dead having blown away his face with a self inflicted shotgun blast; Karen has come home to make special arrangements for the land and her father’s cremation.

She is unaware that her father was the High Priest for the Green God Xibalba and his acolytes drop his corpse into a fissure beneath the morgue. Her sire joins his Master and confers power on Acting Assistant Sheriff Carver, who prefers to rule above ground unlike Karen’s father whose preference in the underworld. From the moment she stepped onto the farm Karen sensed something was wrong. While looking at her father’s body, Karen feels something close around her wrist followed by seeing a dress she wore as a child that was destroyed years ago yet is in pristine perfect condition complete with a still moist blood spot.. Quetzal a Mayan witch who knows that Xibalba is near; she plans to fight the evil God along with the ghosts that will accompany her. However, she also knows she must protect Karen from the malevolent Green God who has plans for the daughter of his loyalist worshipper.

APRICOT BRANDY is an exciting combination horror and dark urban fantasy that takes readers to the edge of sanity and leaves then there wondering if this time evil will triumph. Karen may be innocent, but she is the catalyst (thanks to her DNA) that sets things in motion although she is the polar opposite of her cruel father. She reaches inside herself with determination to defy him and his God while the Mayan witch rallies his ghostly horde and the townsfolk. Readers will find Lynn Cesar’s work magically entertaining.

Harriet Klausner