Deanna Sweeney’s LEGIONS OF LILITH: The Awakening, a book aimed at intertwining the modern world and ancient mythology, is a lurid attempt to revive an old Jewish myth about Adam’s first wife, Lilith. As readers may know, Lilith was an early foray by God into the human experiment who went totally awry and who fell into evil early on in Adam’s life. Long after Adam left the scene of this earth, Lilith is thought to have fostered a tradition of both antipathy and terror toward human beings, shaming and undermining the very race she once called her own. (Lilith is said to kidnap children at night.)

LEGIONS OF LILITH revives and revitalizes this old tale of betrayal, adding its own unique spin on the story of Lilith, who, according to Sweeney, has been banished by angelic forces but who is struggling to make reentry onto earth. All of this ties into the life of her main character, Veronic Strange, a very low-key, casual girl who works at a spa resort and who seems at first glance anything but a mythological folk heroine. Veronica, however, is no ordinary person, as we soon discover she possesses an adept ability to communicate in the afterlife with her grandmother, Elsa, who passed away some years back. The story soon spirals into a degree of sheer madness when people around Veronica start dying, even as Elsa informs her that the spa resort has a very dangerous and peculiar mirror that may be causing the place trouble. In the midst of this, Veronica has a lurid dream about fighting Lilith in some sort of epic battle of good versus evil. Nearby, an owl in a plantation connected to the mirror observes the facets of Lilith’s return. And Veronica discovers a magical amulet in her grandmother’s belongings that reveals to her visions that teach her about the nature of magic and her fate from the past that has tied her life’s destiny inexorably to Lilith.

Even as Veronica sorts out all this information with friendly ghosts along the way, she finds herself at a disturbing impasse as she is framed for a murder she didn’t do, all of which hints at the handiwork of Lilith and her adherents.  Bridging the divide between uneventful modern life and the excitement of magic, LEGIONS OF LILITH is a quotidian fantasy, a modern fable with subtle ties to both terrible and beneficent forces that are constantly vying behind the scenes. It aims to fuse crime thriller writing with the mythos of fantasy, a difficult balancing act which the author pulls off well.

~MP Gunderson for IndieReader