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