Necromancy Cottage, Or, The Black Art of Gnawing on Bones

Necromancy Cottage, Or, The Black Art of Gnawing on Bones is a 2019 Canadian gothic dark fantasy novel by Rebecca Maye Holiday that follows a group of folk sorcerers and witches in their search for liberty on a near-deserted island. Notable for its large word count and its dark portrayal of authoritarianism, the book faced a number of publication release issues until switching publishers in 2021. According to Holiday, "set on a coastal island with very few residents, the book was escapism to some degree."
Plot summary
Cassandra "Casey" Harris, a runaway teenager from an undisclosed city in North America, lives in a cottage on the near-deserted island of Clover Isle with four folk sorcerers engaged in necromancy and black magic: Scott and Celia McDonald (a brother and sister who run the island's only diner), Holly Nemov (a Ukrainian expatriate, errand boy and necromancer's apprentice), and Desmond Trauer, an older but very powerful necromancer who binds people to Clover Isle with a magical seal. Desmond blames this lack of freedom on a supposed witch rumoured to live elsewhere on the island, Aisling St. George, who is said to be evil and dangerous. While Casey enjoys a Halloween celebration at Desmond's cottage, Holly tries to protect her from the darker aspects of Desmond's magic, including the collecting of human bones in the forest. Casey dreams of avoiding her abusive stepfather and the death of her older sister on the ambiguous "mainland", while Holly, haunted by the 1986 Chernobyl disaster that afflicted his family, reflects back on his life, eventually revealing that he is an initiated demon who narrowly escaped becoming the victim of a ritual killing before going to Clover Isle to live in hiding. When the residents of Clover Isle are finally able to break through their boundaries and seek freedom, they struggle to uphold any semblance of individual liberty.
Clover Isle is a fictional island, based on various islands and small villages throughout the province of Nova Scotia.

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