“Sometimes up out of this land a legend begins to move.” – William Stafford
Sean O’Hara is a Cuban/Irish American with a steady job and dreams to pursue, even if the rest of his life isn’t quite so steady. His only family tie is to a cousin, but otherwise, Sean has no other connections to either side of his ancestry. The world of his subconscious, however, is a very different story; it is a place he’s become tethered to by a generations old family curse that causes him to relive the same nightmare over and over again, in an Ireland that hasn’t existed since 1920. In order to regain control of both his life, and quite possibly his sanity, he must pursue even the most unlikely of answers to the questions that were lost nearly a hundred years in the past.
Cormac is descended from a long line of Druids, and he knows as well as anyone that when it comes to the sidhe, anything’s possible, especially when the walls between the here and the there are at their thinnest. Sean is very much in need of Cormac’s talents, but Cormac, in spite of all he knows that exists in the slantways realms of reality, is skeptical of Sean’s story, not to mention is suspicious of his motives, though that quickly changes when a trip to a fairy mound turns dangerous and a stone that Sean has in his possession opens a floodgate of questions and painful memories for Cormac.
Everyone knows you never bargain with the sidhe, everyone knows there’s a price to pay if you try and aren’t very careful with every nuance of the transaction, and everyone should also know you never, ever question fairy tales because as soon as you do, those fantasies of the world that’s just on the other side of the space between could very well become a reality. And when it does, the reality could very much become the nightmare.
Some books you just can’t help but think of as epic, and for me, The Druid Stone is definitely one of them. It is steeped in Gaelic legend, in a land where the Fir Bolg and the Tuatha Dé Danann once reigned—and still do if you believe. It’s the coming together of mythology and the journey of two men who must heal their pasts before they can reconcile their futures.
The Druid Stone is a romance, as well as the romancing of a country that is itself a perfect fairy tale. This is a book filled with wonder and lore and magic and danger and sacrifice and the bridging of that tenuous gap between a common goal and an uncommon bond, and I adored every word of it. It’s a plot heavy book, definitely not one you can read with your brain in neutral, that sweeps you along through a myriad of twists and turns, through time travel and through the lives of the two men who move the action along, sometimes with a methodical precision, sometimes at a break-neck pace, always with an eye toward keeping the reader engrossed in every moment of the journey.
The Druid Stone is available for purchase on August 6, 2012, HERE.