"When your family is gone and your home is gone and nobody knows who you are, then you’re nothing, and so that’s what I am. I never had a dream, or if I did, it was so long ago that I’ve forgotten whatever it was… but that’s alright, because you’ve given me somewhere to go and something to do. I don’t need dreams, and I don’t need to want anything for myself."
— Holly Nemov talking to Casey Harris
Necromancy Cottage, Or, The Black Art Of Gnawing On Bones is a Canadian occult horror fantasy novel published in July 2019 by French-Canadian author Rebecca Maye Holiday, under the imprint Sea Holly Books. An eBook variant was made available through American company Lulu in 2021.
Cassandra "Casey" Angela Harris, an American teenager and the book's main character, runs away to what she believes is a deserted island, hoping to escape her abusive stepfather and the guilt associated with the recent death of an older sister. Casey arrives at Clover Isle to find that the island is occupied by a German-American sorcerer named Desmond Trauer, who possesses a mixed trio of adolescent residents as his cohorts: Scott and Celia McDonald (two Canadian young adults who run the island's diner, both of them having psychic powers), and Holly Eryngo Nemov, a Ukrainian-Russian orphan and Desmond's apprentice. Necromancy Cottage, Or, The Black Art Of Gnawing On Bones addresses themes of exploitation, politics and trauma.
The book contains examples of the following tropes:
- The '70s: Clover Isle is purposely trapped in a 1970s aesthetic after its tourism market crashed. Most of the artificial scenery is 1970s-based, including ugly wallpaper, a heart-shaped hot tub and collectors' drink mugs with popular culture references printed on them.
- Abusive Parents: NOBODY has nice parents in the book, but Dana (the girlfriend of Casey's dad) gets a pass as the all-around nice lady.
- Affectionate Nickname: Casey calls Holly "little sea demon", and he calls her "angel of starlight".
- Age Insecurity: Desmond hates the passing of time, avoids clocks and gets annoyed whenever Holly talks about Desmond's possible age.
- Berserk Button: Holly hates dogs, and especially hates being compared to or called a dog. He snaps at anyone who does it.
- Big Sister Instinct: Celia can be bitter and abrasive, but she treats Casey as her little sister and looks out for her as the book goes on.
- Bittersweet Ending: Casey learns that Holly is going to live a short life and most likely die at sea due to the nature of what he's expected to do as a sea demon.
- Black Comedy: Most of the book's first half is based in dark humour, morbid jokes and quirky occurrences.
- Central Theme: The book mainly deals with the subject of human rights abuses and exploitation. The author has never made it clear why she wrote the book.
- Conditioned to Accept Horror: Casey is shocked that Holly, Scott and Celia are accepting of things such as grinding up human bones for garden fertilizer, acts of magic, and the deaths of other people.
- Cute Clumsy Girl: Casey, who initially feels awkward and ignorant without magic like the rest of Clover Isle's cohorts.
- Deadpan Snarker: Holly, who makes sarcastic comments constantly and finds it funny to annoy Desmond by doing this.
- Desperately Craves Affection: Although Holly claims constantly that he doesn't need a family and knows how to survive on his own, he is very grateful that Casey loves him and he gets extremely attached to her as a person.
- Dirty Communists: Holly expresses hatred towards communism and socialism throughout the book, viewing it as a blight on his home country and heritage.
- Eaten Alive: Casey reads Holly's mind and discovers that he was attacked and eviscerated by a "Black Dog" that got into his apartment bloc and tried to eat him.
- Free-Range Children: None of the 4 adolescents living on Clover Isle have parents, including Casey, whose parents are abusive and estranged. The only 2 adult figures of note are Desmond and Aisling.
- Forgets to Eat: Holly rarely is seen eating anything, and it's never made clear whether he can't eat most things or just doesn't care to. He is seen at one point eating a bayleaf, black tea leaves, and later on in the book, hotel mints.
- Ghost Town: Clover Isle only has 6 residents, and is believed to be a ghost town by the mainland. Anybody who tries to travel there is drowned in a secluded waterfall, with the exception of Casey.
- A God Am I: Holly, averted mainly by the fact that he has no desire to use his powers for anything grander than basic household tasks for the most part. Desmond at one point reveals to Casey that Holly could cause extreme damage to the entire planet if he really wanted to, and that he could resurrect the dead on a mass scale.
- Gothic Horror: Desmond's cottage is a charming brick building with vintage furniture, settled on a rural, gothic island while the mainland is modern and has digital technology.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Holly allows Desmond to sacrifice his life instead of Casey's. As it turns out, Casey's love and Desmond's magic are able to save Holly's life.
- Humans Are Flawed: None of the characters in the book are very nice. Casey manipulates Holly's kindness towards her to get him to use his magic in dangerous ways, Holly slaughters pet dogs in large numbers, and Scott and Celia have both tried to kill Holly (under possession) at least twice. Aisling is nice, but too afraid to try to stop Desmond from committing acts of evil.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: Most of the characters find less horror in demons, hellhounds and black magic and more horror in their own families, who are all either abusive, neglectful, sadistic or absent entirely.
- I Know Your True Name: Holly's real name is "Kholli Eyrngo Kisilenko", but he is unaware of this because his family changed his name to sever association with him. Casey's real last name is "Ratley", not Harris, but she's kept the name Harris because Ratley is the last name of Neil Ratley, her abusive stepfather.
- Lonely Rich Kid: Scott and Celia McDonald grew up with wealthy Canadian-American socialites for parents, and resent it. Celia even makes a straw effigy that looks like her mother and Scott helps her set the effigy on fire while using a page from a Fortune 500 list as kindling.
- Magical Land: Clover Isle is a social experiment set up by Desmond, using demonic magic to create a utopia.
- The Mentally Disturbed: Holly's mental health issues and trauma are treated as mere quirks by his friends. Scott jokes, "Holly's not entirely 'there', if you know what I mean."
- Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold: Aisling St. George, the "evil witch", is actually an aging hippie and a kind lady who grew up with Desmond at their magic boarding school in Germany.
- Monochrome Casting: Aside from the brief mention of a probable Indigenous Canadian friend of Aisling's who brings her supplies in a small boat, the main characters are all white. This is also depicted on the book's cover art and interior illustrations, both of which depict Casey and Holly as being white.
- Moose and Maple Syrup: Rebecca Maye Holiday is Canadian and uses mostly Canadian spellings and slang in the book. Multiple references to Hudson's Bay point blankets, Nova Scotian wine and other Canadianisms that don't fit the book's ambiguously American scenario.
- Organ Theft: Holly makes a dark joke about his past fate, calling himself an "unwilling organ donor to the Black Dog". Through multiple flashbacks, it's revealed that the Black Dog had attacked Holly, confusing him with vivid hallucinations of his deceased family and then ripping open his stomach to feed on his insides, but the god of Holly's village, a large silver reindeer, intervened and rescued him.
- Papa Wolf: Scott with Holly and Casey. Scott is a father figure to both characters and looks after them when they need help.
- Period Piece: While never explicitly stated, the characters reveal through their dialogue that the story is set in the year 2010.
- Poisonous Person: Holly's parents both died of radiation poisoning and cancer after exposure during the Chernobyl disaster.
- Psychic Children: Especially applicable to Holly, who is an initiate sea demon with powers including hydrokinesis, telekinesis and training in black magic, while Casey is a clairvoyant, telepathic witch who also has prophetic dreams.
- Reluctant Mad Scientist: Avgusten, a surgeon and a friend of Holly's parents, is tasked with various experiments and rituals on Holly that never end well. When Avgusten reveals that he is dying from a terminal illness, Holly laughs at him and mocks him, revealing his hatred for the man.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil:
- While living on the streets in a city (ambiguous New York), Holly witnesses his street mother, Marissa, being gang-raped by multiple dock workers in the middle of the night. She later abandons Holly and disappears, joining what is implied to be a human trafficking operation.
- Casey's stepfather, Neil Ratley rapes her numerous times while her mother is at work. This is the primary reason for Casey running away and choosing to keep her last name.
- Strapped to an Operating Table: Avgusten does this to Holly in an unknown location and then proceeds to use most of his blood for a demonic ritual. Holly is able to bite through the straps on his wrists and then bites Avgusten, causing the man to scream.
- Take Away Their Name: Holly's real name was taken from him by his family, and he doesn't know what it is.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Marissa disappears and never tries to contact Holly again.
