September 26, 2013
Dragon Bones:
Two Angels Leave at Sunrise
D.A. Winstead
Aviva Publishing (2013)
ISBN: 9781938686658
New Supernatural Novel Explores Vatican Cover-up of Angel Sighting
What happens when people do things they shouldn’t—things so horrible that they are left racked with guilt and longing for redemption?
Jules Bailey is going to find out in Dragon Bones, the latest paranormal thriller from the pen of D.A. Winstead. Jules is the first character to reappear in one of Winstead’s novels from a previous book. In Wiggle Rooms, Jules helped U.S. diplomat Ted Schwen solve the mystery of what happened to his son who disappeared in Latvia. Now Jules is working in the American embassy in Croatia when the ambassador there sends her on a mission to the old medieval town of Dubrovnik to aid a U.S. senator and his wife in trying to save their daughter.
Against a background of the lingering events of the breakup of Yugoslavia and the resulting wars of twenty years earlier, Dragon Bones explores the need for redemption. An old man involved in horrendous deeds associated with the wars of twenty years earlier awaits death, while others like Rachel, the American senator’s teenage daughter, unexplainably enter an ancient church long since closed by the Catholic Church, and they refuse to leave. Jules arrives on the scene to befriend a handsome young priest, Father Tomas, who explains to her that Rachel is one of a dozen people—and the number is growing—waiting in the church for some sort of miracle or supernatural being to come and take them away, to forgive them of their sins.
At first, Jules is skeptical and tries to understand why Rachel will not leave the church and go home with her parents, but after Father Tomas takes her to a site in the mountains where a dragon reputedly crashed into a cliff and died, and he tells her that the dragon’s bones are in the church, Jules begins to see the pieces coming together to reveal a mystery that will only make sense to people of faith.
Sadly, the Vatican has members who want to control people’s faith, deciding what should and should not be known by then. Soon, a delegation from the Vatican comes to Dubrovnik. Can Jules and Father Tomas help the penitents within the church, or will organized religion once again try to control people’s faith?
Dragon Bones is D.A. Winstead’s fourth novel, and it is my favorite to date because while in all his novels the supernatural forces and legends he writes about always cause the main characters to question reality, only to discover there are things about this world they cannot know, in this novel, the magic was more real to me, perhaps because I am Catholic and can more closely relate to the religious rituals and ideas raised than I could in his previous novels filled with African religion and superstition. That said, Winstead is respectful of Christianity, making it clear that many good men and women work to enhance the faith, but a few bad eggs exist in every religion—and those bad eggs help to make great fiction.
Readers of Winstead’s previous novels will not be disappointed by Dragon Bones. Anyone who wants a good supernatural novel that does more than just scare, but makes people question the world around them and see and appreciate it with new eyes, will find much to enjoy in this book. I only hope Jules makes appearances in future novels.
For more information about D.A. Winstead and Dragon Bones, visit www.DAWinsteadBooks.com
— Tyler R. Tichelaar, award-winning author of Spirit of the North: a paranormal romance
