Drifters by Shannon Cummings Drifters
Drifters
by Shannon Cummings
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
My Ratings 4.5/5
Synopsis
Tate Landon has an ability to see the unseen and drift between the real world and dream world. Her parents don’t believe she has abilities or that their ancestors practiced witchcraft though they have dark ancestral secrets and their house is haunted. When Tate’s childhood boy friend Jon returns home, she is forced to choose between him and her college boyfriend Gordon. It’s difficult for Tate to discern who is an ally or enemy in the spiritual war she’s in. But Jon and Gordon, though enemies, join forces to help Tate win a war against demons. She visits the island countries her parents’ are from and learns about the practices that caused a generational curse in her bloodline. She also learns the difference between acts of witchcraft and gifts of the Holy Spirit. Throughout her journey, Tate is forced to make life-changing decisions in order to save souls and keep her family from spiritual bondage.
My Thoughts
It is entertaining, intelligent, horrific, informative and progressive: it is an astoundingly well balanced. The tactic, it turns out, is unnecessary. The book--the story--is stunning. It's stunning enough that the frustrating aspects of the telling are forgivable and actually retrospectively satisfying (which I suspect is what the author wanted). While the fractional digressions, on the one hand, can have you groping around for a lighter--they, on the other hand, work to accustom you to the novel's epically meandering pace. Also, they effectively allow you to feel a certain urgency near the end of the book, as the narrator "runs out of time."
It's no good for readers looking for a compact plot-line or a coherent narrative. Depending on how you approach it. Drifters, is both speedy and slow, a laugh and a litany, obscure yet obvious, weird but wonderful.
What surprised me, however, is how much simple pleasure I was able to take from Cummings's writing. I was overwhelmed by its zest and sparkle; the sheer joy in creation shown in every gleefully overloaded sentence, every authorial sleight of hand and every scatological joke.
As the concoction progresses (the chopping, the pounding, the fermenting and the shaking as obvious in the rhythms of the language as in the emerging stories) magic sets in: Tate Landon is possessed of supernatural powers to see the unseen and drift between the real world and dream world.
The extraordinary alchemy of Drifters was its miraculous fusion of the fantastical and the generational curse.
Highly Recommended!
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