The Angel Caste series - Book 3 - Angel Bone
The Story
To keep a lost child safe, Viv is forced to abandon her search for her mother and all hope of finding Thris again. And the dangers escalate when the child falls ill. Viv takes a terrible risk to save the child’s life but her gamble ends in disaster and she strikes a deadly bargain to escape.
They reach the child’s home but find no safety there and set out again for a larger settlement but in an alien, a war-torn fold, Viv must draw on every one of her streetwise skills to survive.
Viv knows little of children and the child is untrusting but love slowly grows between them as they journey on together. And then, as they near safety, they are overtaken by enemy fighters and Viv is seized. A short time later, the fighters are killed by a second group, whose leader believes Viv is one of the enemy. Prevented from executing her on the spot, the leader condemns her to a slower, more painful death.
In Ezam, Thris struggles to care for Ky who, traumatised by the Rynth, flees and transits again. Thris pursues him and they find themselves in a fold where the only rift out is a death-trap.
Ash is unaware of his friends’ plight. Lost in the White Helixai’s mesmerising light, he sinks ever deeper into its strange, dream-like world, where the words of his blue angel predecessor that, light is the lure and light the trap, might well prove prophetic.
The Idea
The Angel Caste series follows the journeys of both humans and angels as they explore what it means to be human and divine. Some quest journeys are more human-focused and others are more angel-focused. Viv's journey is more human-focused as she travels through the different worlds of the Rynth in search of her mother. As her guide, Thris moves between the demands of Viv’s search and his angelic obligations as a lower order angel in Ezam. Like Thris, Ky also has obligations to more senior angels in Ezam, at least at first. Ash rejects having a mentor and so is freer in his quest to transcend.
Thris is changed radically by the beastman attack and Ky is changed by being trapped with Thris in Maze Fold. It is Ky who comes up with a strategy to escape which gives him the courage to later renounce his role of Shadow and break from his manipulative mentor.
Ash struggles to discover the significance of being Ezam's only blue angel and why he has white plumage (a sign of ascendance) while still a lowly Dane. After enduring terrifying tests by the Blue and Red Helixais, he knows he must visit the White and Green Helixais to advance his quest.
The Secondary World
Angel Bone takes place in a range of folds. Maze Fold, where Ky and Thris are trapped, is a maze of smooth black marble where hostile apparitions prevent the angels from escaping by flight. The centre of the maze holds a lotus flower pool that hides a water rift.
Back in the Rynth in search of Viv, Thris briefly revisits Hearth, Moth and Beast Folds again before returning to The Wheel, this time near the Leferen.
Ash becomes lost for time in the White Helixai's pristine pools of light, before he visits the Green Helixai. He remembers it as being composed of gleaming green stone but it is now rank with vegetation and decay. He falls through its sludge to its heart, but unlike the Blue, Red and White Helixai, that have stone slabs at their cores, the Green has an intricately arranged pile of bones.
The Music
Ash's journey is the most overtly spiritual of the angels and I have always enjoyed The Beloved for its spiritual joy. While it praises the Prophet Muhammad, and Angel Caste is not religious (Christian or otherwise), the story is spiritual, and the music is a good fit for the angels' love of the Great Beyond.
The Beloved - Yusuf and Youssou N'Dour(An other cup).
Deep Fantasy
Thris's need to care for Ky keeps him in Ezam until Ky's terror results in them being stranded in Maze Fold. This maze is a microcosm of Ezam and forces them both to take the next steps in their journeys. Ky calls on a skill he does not know he has to keep them safe as they search for a way out. This finally delivers them to the pool in the middle of the maze.
The pool, with its sacred, blue-tipped water lilies, is a mandala; a spiritual symbol of wholeness (and a feminine symbol when contrasted with the maze. Eg The mandala is circular, has fertile sludge, and an umbilical cord of twisted water-lily stems). Water often symbolises the unconscious, as it does on this occasion, and after they escape, aided by the umbilical cord of water-lily stems, Ky emerges back into Ezam a different angel.
Ash is trapped in the White Helixai's light, which represents the rational, and is freed by Thris's need in Beast Fold, which reaches Ash as a piercing shaft of green light. Green/growing reminds Ash that he must attend to his physical needs to ascend. He visits the Green Helixai, a seething mass of life, where he finds bones that reinforce that angels are flesh and blood, not just spirit/intellect.
Thris and Viv both experience violence in Wheel Fold and Thris's brutalisation, like the fighting, is a manifestation of the deeper malaise that afflicts the fold. Viv's rape undoes the progress she has made towards wholeness. She can no longer harmonise, a skill Thris taught her to integrate her human and angelic elements, and her anger and aggression surge back. The damage inflicted by the rapist is worsened by the violence of the Eshadi leader, but the Eshadi leader's lein (blood-brother) offers kindness, and the potential of a loving relationship.
For the first time in her life, Viv is also offered a home, by the elderly owner of a sett. This is the first, positive father-figure Viv has encountered and, along with the potential of a positive relationship with the Eshadi leader’s lein, and her love for the child, gives her hope.
Happy reading.