The Novel Approach

Aisling Book Three: Beloved Son by Carole Cummings

“This is not at all what I thought it would be.”

This is so very much more.

A beloved son. The Beloved Son. The son of the mother, and the Son of the Mother—both placed above and before all else for the good of all mankind. The Aisling and the Guardian, the Dream and the Keeper, Watcher, Guide—Shaman. To be the heart of the Heart of the World—it is choice and honor and duty and sacrifice and trust and love. And fear, always there is a shadow of fear behind the courage it requires to stand behind and beside the one who would willingly make an offering of himself to save the other and to save the world. To save the Father.

“He is what he’s made of himself.”

To undo the damage of the one who’d convinced the Heart of the World that he wasn’t loved. To protect the Beloved Son from the one who wants his name, the key, the power; to protect him from those who reject the Mother, those who hate the children who remain faithful to her, those who keep her bound by their fervent dogma. To protect him from the mania of those who seek to fulfill the gods’ purpose, yet cannot possibly know what that purpose truly is because sometimes man’s interpretation of the arcane is little more than hubris and fanaticism…and faith. Blind faith that what is believed is the only way and the only truth and the only light.

A cage is still a cage, even if it is gilded by love. What is important seems to be whether you choose to be there or are forced to be, and whether or not you hold the key.

“Mundane, ordinary paradise.” The Cradle where they are reborn, the place where they can now dream their own dreams and leave the dreams of the others to the Father, the place where people who know nothing about you can still love and revere you, simply because they believe you are worthy.

“They knew.” And that was enough.

The battle is fought. The Cleric and the Soul-eater, the Aisling and the Guardian have faced one another down in a fight for supremacy, and love, a love that is not supposed to be, a love that could very well have corrupted rather than confirmed the outcome of the battle is the very thing that resurrects and redeems the Heart of the World.

The beginning was the end. The end is the beginning. When one dies to the old life and is reborn to the new, that’s the only way it can be. “We build our own cages and we make our own keys.” There is only moving forward along a path that has not been well worn by Time and History, because there is now a connection between the Aisling and the Guardian that is unprecedented. And inadvisable by those whose job it is to give counsel. But there is always choice, and it’s the cost of those choices and the price one is willing to pay that outweigh all else.

This is a journey that will begin on new ground, unexplored and uncharted territory, unproven and perhaps littered with danger and the debris of a war that is won, but to what end? It is time to make reparations, to attempt to right wrongs, to help the hurting to heal from the sins that were not their own, and to make sure the evil that was done is contained, not allowed to fester and to regroup. It may be a journey without end.

This series has been a masterpiece in the making, a wonder to behold, and I am in utter awe of it. Each word, each sentence that has been threaded and woven to form the tapestry was selected with the utmost care and attention to detail. It is at once ethereal and aesthetic, a feast for the imagination and a wholly sensory experience.

Is it finished? I can only hope that it’s not.

“I can’t seem to help myself.”

Buy Aisling Book Three: Beloved Son HERE.

Aisling Book Two: Dreams by Carole Cummings

I wish there were a word in the English language that meant something bigger than love, a word that meant something grander than epic, a word that meant something greater than extraordinary.

Extralovepicary. There. If you can’t come up with the appropriate word, sometimes you just have to make one up. Aisling Book Two: Dreams is extralovepicary. It is transcendent, monumental, unequivocally one of the finest books I’ve ever experienced and a significant layer added to the already complex foundation that is this series.

The Call has been made, has now been answered, and looks to be leading directly into a war that may very well end all wars, though that remains to be seen. Wil and Dallin will return to the Womb, return to the place where they will be reborn and now the question is, will the elemental bond they’ve forged through earned trust and sacred free will and solemn sacrifice—or the promise to sacrifice for the greater good—be enough to see them through? The Weft is now inextricably woven into the Warp, but will a betrayal unravel those delicate threads? Will secrets kept and secrets unveiled fray the yarn from the skein that is beginning to look a lot like love?

There is a pendulum that had once idled in a state of suspension on the side of “I choose me.” It has now begun the slow and steady swing to “how can I choose me, when there is now an us to consider?”

“There’s always you.”

There is decidedly a feeling to this arc of the series that’s a lot like navigating a minefield, where a single misstep could dismember and disassemble the entire framework of existence, a place where, when you don’t have your own identity, you become whatever the situation demands, a place where being “several different unfinished people, all rolled into one man who took what he needed from each facet and used it as he saw fit, when he saw fit” can leave a Guardian tiptoeing through and around and into unfamiliar and formidable territory, over and over again.

There is a very distinct feeling that, before I’ve finished navigating this minefield with Dallin and Wil, I will have to reacquaint my heart with the feeling of being whole and intact once again.

The name. The name is the key to the soul, and now the name is known, was there all along, waiting to be discovered, save for the cruelest of ironies—it is etched, like Braille to a sighted man who feels nothing more than bumps on a page, upon the skin of a man who cannot read. And now, when the name has been the thing that has been longed for above all else, something more than only a name because it’s something that was gifted to you by someone who loved you, it remains in the hands of the Guardian, for safe keeping, because to reveal it to its owner would mean to place the key directly into the hands of evil incarnate.

When one has been dreamt into existence, however, created in the Father’s image, the denial of the Self becomes, perhaps, the desire to control one’s own destiny. It is a battle of free will versus Fate, the consummate struggle to be the navigator of one’s own course despite the forces greater than oneself that insist upon directing the journey. Life becomes a ship without the rudder of ancestry to guide it, and so the compass becomes the need to connect with the one who puts you before all else, even though the promise has been made to put the needs of others first.

To be imprisoned by the cruel realities of one’s own apparent destiny leaves little room for choice. To be caged within the protective confines of the arms of the one who loves you also leaves little room for choice. The difference, though, is one place is about restriction, the other is about release, release from the shackles of lies and betrayal. It is about the freedom to fall and to fly and even to fail, like a river overflowing the confines of its banks to consume all that stands in its way. Love is the uncontrollable force that seems destined to drive Wil and Dallin toward and through what lies ahead.

Now, it’s time to move forward, and I go with a mixture of enthusiasm and hesitation because I’m not certain if this means the end of this series.

Buy Aisling Book Two: Dreams HERE