Savanah, Georgia is devastated by Hurricane Josephine, which drowns much of the city, killing people, and affecting many others in adverse ways. While Hurricane Josephine as depicted in Delilah Dawson’s Servants of the Storm is a fictional storm (and more than just a storm), the devastation such a catastrophe can inflict is too well known, just look to the recent past at the horror stories from Hurricane Katrina or Superstorm Sandy. Dawson takes that devastation and weaves a dark, horrific, supernatural thread into this novel through the eyes of first person narrator Dovey.
Josephine strikes at the beginning of the novel, literally ripping Dovey’s friend Carly out of her hands. Dawson then shows a brief funeral scene wherein Dovey looks into her friend’s casket and screams before jumping the narrative about a year forward. Dovey is beginning to question her perceptions, but thinks the pills she’s taking for schizophrenia are clouding her vision. Most importantly, she wants to try and save her friend’s soul and feels the best solution is to quit taking her medication, which will allow her to see the post-Josephine Savannah unimpeded. Once she quits taking the pills, she does indeed see things she was unable to see before. Dovey finds her way to a very seedy bar after following a girl she thinks is Carly.
In addition to her senses reawakening, Dovey’s self and identity return to the surface. She notes that her feistiness, her emotions return. This is noticed most by Baker, the third and final member of the Power Trio which consisted of Carly, Dovey, and Baker. Baker is more adjusted to the devastated Savannah and the loss of Carly, but his eyes were not opened up in the same way as Dovey’s eyes were opened after she quit her meds. However, Baker does notice the change in mood and demeanor of his old friend once she’s off her medication.
At this time, Baker also begins to act on his feelings towards Dovey – he wants to be more than a friend. Baker is frustrated when Dovey begins hanging out with a slightly older young man named Isaac, a charming knowledgeable fellow. What Baker doesn’t initially know is that Isaac is giving Dovey an education on the dark spiritual forces taking root in Savannah and the true malicious force at the heart of Hurricane Josephine. Meanwhile, Dovey is participating in the school play – The Tempest – and manages to go from background player to feature – Ariel. This very much ties into the plans of the dark powers at the core of Savannah’s pending supernatural conflict. With these conflicts on her mind, in addition to pretending to take her medication so she can fool her parents, Dovey hopes to save her friend’s soul as well as her own.
I was sucked into this book very quickly; Dawson’s voice (and that of Dovey) is powerful, very engaging, and evocative. Even if the character frustrated me with some of her headstrong decisions, I found her to be quite consistent throughout the novel. Early on, the reliability of Dovey as a narrator comes into question when, after being off her medication, she ignores or doesn’t remember events which happened in just the previous chapter. The ‘unreliable narrator’ as a fairly common trope in novels/stories told from the first person POV and Dawson handles that storytelling tool quite well. She doesn’t beat the reader over the head with it, rather, it is employed judiciously and at times subtly .Her drive to save her friend (and later herself) pulled me along the currents of the story very strongly up until the end.
The city of Savannah comes alive very much as a character in its own right, both the seedy elements and dark supernatural entities pulling the strings of the plot. I also thought the monsters, demons, and spirits who haunted Dovey and her city came across as genuine and with a level of authenticity to be if not believable, but plausible. I visited Savannah almost 15 years ago so my memories of the city are confined to a tourist ghost walk, business meetings, and a brew pub (http://www.moonriverbrewing.com/), so I didn’t see the underbelly of the city or anything outside of the touristy spots. That having been said, after being so absorbed in Servants of the Storm, I feel like I visited Savannah and its dark environs in reality with how well Dovey conveys her travels through the city.
Yeah, that ending…I’ll just say I dearly hope Simon Pulse gets the sequel from Delilah Dawson very soon because despite the closure (however abrupt), so much is left open for Dovey and her plight.
Full disclosure: I won the copy of the book I read through a twitter promo Delilah ran, so she personalized the book with little notes here and there throughout. In a sense, I’d say I read the “Director’s Cut” of Servants of the Storm. I can’t say with full confidence how much those notes and “behind the scenes” elements enhanced my enjoyment of the novel, but I can say without them, it was a helluva tale. I’ll say again – this book demands a sequel.
© 2014 Rob H. Bedford
Recommended
Published by Simon Pulse / Hardcover ISBN 978-1-44248-387-1
August 2014 / 384 Pages
http://www.whimsydark.com/
Review copy courtesy of the author
