The Angel Caste series - Book 1 - Angel Blood
The Story
Street-kid, thief, criminal: Viv is desperate to change her life.
On day release from jail to attend the funeral of her father, a violent drunk she feared and despised, her real father turns up, the powerful angel Archae Kald. He offers to reunite Viv with the mother she thought dead and, determined to find the only person who has ever loved her, Viv travels through a rift to the male angel world of Ezam.
Kald assigns his protégé, the beautiful angel Thris, to guide Viv to her mother. It is Thris’s job to keep Viv safe in the Rynth, the vast tangle of worlds she never knew existed. But Viv is deeply damaged from her life on the streets and in no mood to trust anyone, even an angel with a face to die for. They set out, but as the complications multiply, disaster follows.
Thris might be eons old, but he knows little about females, especially ones who are half human. Like his closest friends, Ash and Ky, all he wants is to transcend but when he and Viv stumble into the acrid world of Moth Fold, and Viv’s latent angel traits emerge, transcendence seems the last thing possible.
After a devastating attack, Viv ends up lost and alone in the Rynth. Will she survive to continue the search for her mother? Or end her days in an alien world?
The Idea
I am interested in the differences between the human and the divine, and wonder just how blurred the lines are. I knew the hero would be a young woman of mixed human-angel parentage who searched for her mother. I also knew she would be aided by an angel guide. As a pantser, I did not know much else but as I wrote, a very strong character emerged called Viv, or Violet Iris Vacia. She was Australian, 18 years old, from an abusive background, and in jail.
I intended to focus on Viv rather than her angel guide Thris. Historically angels have been depicted as glorious, wise, and beautiful, or evil and fallen, and more recently, as sexy and hot but I wanted a more complex angel. Viv's most obvious quest is to find her mother but it is also to heal from the violence she has endured. Thris's most obvious quest is to ascend through Ezam’s angel hierarchy and then transcend, the quest of all angels, but I wondered what else he needed to do. Simplistically, ascending and transcending, should be the result of good deeds, but what constitutes good deeds, and are they still good if the deeds are motivated by evil?
These questions were better explored through the quests of more than one angel and so Ky and Ash emerged. Their friendship with Thris is bound by the three of them appearing simultaneously in Ezam and, as the story unfolds, this fact becomes increasingly significant.
The Secondary World
Angel Blood starts off briefly in our world (that Ezam’s angels call Moonsun) then moves to Ezam which, as an angel world, I wanted to be as beautiful as the angels. The Dendrinai is a forest of silver and bronze trees with leaves that tinkle in the breeze; the sky cycles between umber, peach and orange; giant shards of crystal glitter among the trees to test angels; and immense twisted mountains of red, white, green, and blue (the Helixai), funnel winds through their hollow cores to make beautiful music. Ezam is highly symmetrical, for angels equate symmetry with harmony, which they prize. Thus, the shining Dendrinai is circled by the Hollow Hills, and these in turn by the Thorny Mountains. Four lakes are set an equal distance between the four Helixai; their water the same exquisite turquoise as the Principae (angels who have transcended to Crystal Fold, the last stage before absolute transcendence when angels still manifest physically).
Crystal Fold is a world of glittering silver grass, pale amethyst skies, and ice-like, translucent 'fairy castles' coloured by the Principae's light-filled turquoise bodies.
Viv briefly visits Sun Fold (full of tiny, gem-like birds; pools of oily gold 'water'; and two suns) and, when she and Thris transit, the first fold they visit is Hearth Fold. This fold is similar to a pre-industrial version of our world but with sentient flowers. Danger forces Viv and Thris to take the next available rift out, which takes them to Moth Fold.
Moth Fold is known to Ezam's angels because its enormous moths create a dazzling, aqua display reminiscent of the Principae's glorious colour. This contrasts with Moth Fold's dun-coloured landscape and sepia-coloured sky. The moths in their pupae or grub form, exude a bitter odour.
Events in Moth Fold throw Viv and Thris into Sand Fold, an immense desert that obliterates all life when the wind blows and Viv also visits Beast Fold, a jungle landscape with creatures that combine human and panther elements.
The Music
I did not write Angel Caste to music, but London Grammar - If you wait has the right emotional feel.
Deep Fantasy
Ezam is a highly symmetrical and ordered fold (world) and angels harmonise regularly to keep their bodies in alignment, that is, as symmetrical as possible. While Ezam's order is disturbed by Viv's arrival, there is already an implicit threat of upheaval. Angels appear in Ezam singly but Thris, Ash and Ky appeared simultaneously. To add to the danger, Ash is blue, a rare angel colour that occurs only once in any group of angels.
Ezam's order does not extend to the Rynth, which is a countless collection of folds (worlds). Ezam is an anagram of maze and Rynth is drawn from the word/idea of the labyrinth. While the words maze and labyrinth are often used interchangeably, a labyrinth is actually a meditative walk; more of a journey into the heart and spirit, than a series of obstacles to be overcome as a maze is.
Book 1 in the Angel Caste series, Angel Blood, establishes a world where the systems of ascendance and transcendence seem clear but which unfolding events suggest are not. Viv's arrival means that Thris (as her guide) and Ky (as Thris's Shadow) must venture deep into the Rynth where they are tested in unforeseen ways. The third in the trinity, the blue angel Ash, is tested in turn by each of the four Helixai. While Thris and Ky journey outwards into the Rynth to explore their spirits and psyches, Ash's journey is more obviously an inner journey, where he must explore his own and Ezam's hidden depths.
Happy reading.