Samhain by Nuith Lachesis, Seed of Fear by Patrick Seaman, A Woman Between Two Worlds by Kim Brantley

Samhain: Origins, Lore, Ancestor Traditions, and Flexible Wiccan Rituals for Solitary Practice, Couples, Families, and Covens by Nuith Lachesis

Samhain is an important holiday for Wiccans. It marks the end of the harvest season and the beginning of the winter in the Gaelic harvest calendar. Bonfires play a huge role for practical reasons like protection, gathering, and driving off pests and symbolic reasons like purification and marking the turning of the year. The day carried strong associations with the dead and ancestors. It’s sometimes referred to as a thinning veil. Divination customs are also traditions in modern harvests and Halloween traditions. This book explores the various customs and traditions associated with the holiday including for various types of Wiccans. 

The chapters include “History and Origin,” “Symbolism and Correspondence,” “Planning Your Celebration,” “The Solitary Flame: Rituals for Solitary Practice,” “Two Flames: Rituals for Couples,” “The Family Hearth: Rituals for Families,” “The Circle’s Fire: Rituals for Covens,”and  “Until The Wheel Turns Again.”

One of the most intriguing facets of this book is the emphasis on different Wiccan rituals for solitaries, couples, families, and covens. To do this author Nuith Lachesis mentions specific people who represent those types: Rowan, a Solitary Wiccan who lives in an urban apartment, so has access to only a limited amount of tools to practice her craft, Briar, a Solitary Wiccan with 20 years of experience, Dana and Marlowe, a couple who practice Wicca together, The Hart Family, parents Sam and Jordan and their three children Avery, Quinn, and Wren who represent the Fam-Trad tradition of passing Wiccan rituals across generations, and The Ashgrove Circle, a coven of eight to ten members who engage in elaborate ceremonies. These examples personalize the various rituals and practices that Wiccans can take to honor the holiday. 

For example “The Solitary Flame” chapter includes “Ancestor Altar Ritual,” “First Solitary Samhain Ritual,” “The Dumb Supper,” “Divination Night,” “A Releasing Ritual,” “Veil-Walking Meditation,” “Apartment Friendly Full Celebration,” and the “Full Solitary Rite.” 

 

Seed of Fear: A Biotech Conspiracy Thriller (The Quiet Harvest Series) by Patrick Seaman

Seed of Fear is a tense and emotion driven thriller about a couple separated by the manipulations of others.

DEA Special Agent Sean McCreary is the only survivor of an ambush that left the rest of his team dead or languishing in the hospital. He is filled with Post Trauma and Survivor's Guilt but he has another more personal struggle to deal with. His girlfriend, Grace Liang, a food engineer, has gone missing. Unbeknownst to her, she created a specific pathway design that other more nefarious government representatives and cartels want to get their hands on. Grace tries to survive her captivity while Alec tries to find her while uncovering the ambush and the reasons behind it.

This book has all of the qualities of an effective thriller. It has nail biting action, various methods of torture, clandestine meetings, betrayals on top of betrayals, and physical, emotional, and mental trauma than a real person can possibly take but it’s all in a day’s work for the protagonists. But what really sells it is the emotional journeys that Alec and Grace are forced to take.

Alec’s PTSD from the ambush is very real. There are some moments where he encounters his former teammates and their family members. He recognizes the cost of living a life on the edge for a government that could thank you for your service one minute and then pretend like you never existed in the first place. In some of the worst moments, he experiences betrayal when he learns that instead of helping him avenge their deaths, his superiors and colleagues would rather hush the whole thing up.

Grace also experiences betrayal as well though a more personal kind. She learns that one of her kidnappers is someone that she knows and once trusted. Her moments with this abductor are some of the emotional highlights as she simultaneously hates their actions and misses the relationship that they used to have. 

 A Woman Between Two Worlds by Kim Brantley 

This is a Science Fiction novel about discovering one’s inner power, transformation, rebuilding one’s life after tragedy, self-awareness, searching for and finding a higher purpose.

World governments have been given a message: In 30 days aliens, called the Velari, will arrive and in the meantime they have to prepare humanity for their arrival. After the transmission, the DNA of various Earthlings change revealing a hidden alien ancestry and the ability to communicate telepathically with the Velari.

One of those humans is Cassandra, a divorcee who is embarking on a second happier but unfulfilling marriage. She is selected along with the others to be an ambassador to the Velari and has to spend a lot of time with them. While among them, she has to figure out who she is, who she loves, and what she wants to do with her new abilities.

A Woman Between Two Worlds is a novel about transforming one’s body, mind, spirit, and purpose in life. Those who have been transformed, called Pathfinders, not only communicate with the Velari but share memories, emotions, thoughts, memories, and experiences. This bond changes them physically, mentally, and emotionally so they obtain higher consciousness and enlightenment. It's an experience that is both terrifying and exhilarating at the same time.

Kim Brantley explores the various aspects from the people going through the changes and those around them. The Pathfinders themselves experience this amazing transformation where they have the mindset of otherworldly beings but are still in the bodies of humans. They might have visions of other worlds but still have to eat, sleep, and live around people. 

This division of ethereal and human can be draining and create a schism within. Cassandra for example shares thoughts and emotions with others, but she worries about how her actions affect those around her. 

Cassandra is already anxious from her Earth troubles. She is shattered by the end of her marriage and still in that phase where she both loves and hates her ex. She floats along in her life feeling detached until the transformation happens.

The transformation turns her into someone more empathetic, compassionate, and intuitive. The visions of the Velari and their home world help her and the other Pathfinders search for ways to save their world. Far from being the drifting troubled woman preoccupied with her own struggles, she finds purpose and meaning in her life.

However no transformation comes without confusion or pain. Cassandra is filled with questions. How does being an alien ambassador change her relationship with her ex? Do her neighbors see an enlightened being, a cult member, or a traitor to her species? Do they want to heed her advice, burn her at the stake, or do both? Becoming a Pathfinder is an illuminating but anxiety inducing experience.

Earthlings around Cassandra and the other Pathfinders are fascinated but also fearful of the changes in their friends and family. Some come to them for advice or want to take part in the new world that they are creating. Others want to exploit them for their own gain. Others fear and want to study them, quarantine them, or execute them out of concerns that they will destroy the planet. 

The Velari gives Earth the answers to their problems in human form but the people have to set prejudice and fear aside and trust the human vessels to listen to them. 

New Book Alert: Mazarine Dreamer by Francessca Bella; Novel Length Poem Is Long on Fantasy and Reincarnated Romance

New Book Alert: Mazarine Dreamer by Francessca Bella; Novel Length Poem Is Long on Fantasy and Reincarnated Romance 

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Did I mention that reincarnated lovers and time travel romances were one of the top themes this year? After Canvas of Time by Amelie Pimont, Rosemary for Remembrance by Nikki Broadwell, Trapped in Time by Denise Daye, Eternally Artemisia by Melissa Muldoon, The Reincanationist Papers by D. Eric Maikrantz, Demons of Time: Race to the 7th Sunset by Varun Sayal, One Night in Paris by Juliette Sobanet, The Amber Crane by Malve Van Hassel, and The Love of the Tayamni Series by T.A. McLaughlin. Why not end the year right with another one?

So how does one make a frequently done theme work? One way is to do what Francessca Bella did, turn your reincarnated fantasy romance into pure poetry, literally.

What makes Bella's The Mazarine Dreamer stand out is its execution. Bella wrote the book in poetic format creating a novel length poem. It's a difficult endeavor. (Indeed, I tried to write this review in poetry form as a reaction but it didn't work very well so I used prose.) But Bella not only deserves props for trying, she deserves it for succeeding.

The plot involves Flavia Mavaret, a psychologist. Flavia interviews a monk who is either suffering from hallucinations or is possessed. She does some studying and learns that Pastello Abbey, the current monastery, has a curse on it.  There have been at least three accounts of mysterious deaths and disappearances affecting Pastello since the Renaissance (at least three that are reported.)

While investigating the abbey and its surroundings, Flavia follows a carrier pigeon to the wooden caravan home of Madame Idona, a mediatress and past life expert. Idona reveals that Flavia is the reincarnation of a woman who was caught in a love triangle in the Renaissance that ended very badly.

Idona gives Flavia the chance to go back in time to set things right. She is to wear a bracelet on her wrist and when a pigeon appears before her, she must recite the Latin words on the scroll that it carries.

Once Flavia travels back in time, she encounters Nevian Evegane, a Renaissance scientist who is trying to breed a clowder of battle cats called the calor. The Renaissance version of Flavia is engaged to Nevian but things aren't going well, mostly because of Nevian's obsession with calor breeding and his  arrogant bordering on abusive behavior. During a tense argument, Flavia goes to the nearby Briarfield estate and encounters Seron Briarfield, a charming artist and magician and the other third of the triangle.

If things weren't complicated enough in the Renaissance, Flavia can travel between past and present. In modern day, Flavia is investigating the curse on Pastello and a sinister creature called Mortis Nuntius. She also catches the attention of her colleague, Netius Eveseen, an intelligent and driven physicist with an interest in zoology and Netius' friend, Lero Monteith, an illustrator with an interest in magic. What a coincidence, Netius and Lero bear strong resemblances to Nevian and Soren respectively and before too long, it appears that the triangle echoes once again and history is cursed to repeat itself.

Bella shows tremendous aptitude for the mechanics of poetry such as rhyme and meter. She begins her work with "So now, my heart a lacked complexity/I work to decode for salvation  its perplexity." 

Since the book is written in rhyming couplet, there are times when Bella really stretches for a near rhyme like "pounders and blunders."(She also solves the riddle that if you find an unrhymable word like orange just have the characters make up a word like "apporange." It worked when Lewis Carroll did it.) Of course if you are writing a novel in poetic form, not every line is going to be great and it doesn't take away the tremendous achievement and talent in writing the book this way in the first place.

Bella was clearly inspired by the Romantic poetry narratives of the past. There is a strong sense of respect for the natural and supernatural world that is spread throughout the work. Flavia is fascinated with pure white albino animals. She herself has albinism and is often recognized for her uncommon appearance. So she relates to these physically unique creatures. Many times pale animals like foxes, birds, cats, and rabbits appear before sharing a psychic connection or to guide her.

Besides the natural world, there are strong ties to the supernatural world.

The book has plenty of magic and an awareness of motifs and themes found in fairy tales and Romantic poetry.

Idona is similar to the wise guide/Mentor figure who gives the protagonist the task and advises them on what path they need to take. 

There are curses and demons. Flavia is haunted by a demonic figure that delights in mentally torturing her and those it encounters.

 The animals are not just a natural connection to Flavia but also a magical one as they lead her to various steps on her quest. There are various motifs that can be found in such works like the Rule of Three (three magic words that Flavia has to recite to travel through time; three encounters at Pastello before Flavia investigated it). 

Color and imagery are also used to capture Romantic Fantasy. Bella's writing helps the Reader visualize the book in front of them.

One of my favorite stanzas shows the transition between past and present as her bracelet transports her.

Flavia says:

"A moving Mazarine fog and I synchronized

the sole two things in existence organized

We shared definition and became premium

to make the presiding magic medium

a true traveling point between my mod life

as Flavia Mavaret and one with past ride

set five hundred years back in the Renaissance

It promised to return me to ancient haunts

Encapsulated into that blue abyss, I experienced

feelings again. They dramatically influenced me as I infused with the color mazarine and became a softer dreamer in its scene

Life I gained inside it, so my understanding 

of it changed thickly into one for demanding

a mazarine transcendence. A blue beyond 

warded off death. In its abyss, I did abscond

Fading slowly away was that blue and mist-swirled 

Surrealism to give way to an alt-world."

Mazarine ends up functioning as a color that represents spirituality and time. It is a conduit between the worlds of past and present and allows Flavia to travel between them. The Mazarine Dreamer is like a study of Romantic fantasy and the tropes that are found inside them.

Flavia herself goes through the various steps of the Hero's Journey such as the Call to Adventure, Refusing the Call, Challenges, Transformation, Atonement, and Return.

Like many heroes before her, Flavia is not the same person that she was before. She begins as a modern woman certain about her career and her place in the world as a psychologist. Though she is curious and open minded enough to accept ideas as magic, she isn't experienced in them personally. This experience of traveling through time opens her mind to become a more understanding and accepting character, especially towards other people who remember their former lives or are  maybe carrying issues and fears that resonated into their current live. She becomes a guide to them the way Idona was for her.

There is a theme of physical vs. metaphysical throughout the Mazarine Dreamer and much of it is carried over by the two (technically four) men in Flavia's life.

In the past, Nevian and Soren firmly stand on opposite sides of the Renaissance ideal. Nevian is all about Reason and science. He is cold and methodical. When he receives the commission to create calors, that becomes his central obsession. He is arrogant in his pursuits and he is condescending and verbally abusive towards Flavia.

On the other hand, Soren stands on the opposite spectrum. He believes in magic not science and has a spiritual connection to the world around him. He is more emotional and Romantic and soothes the loneliness that Flavia feels.

Unfortunately, Soren and Nevian being pitched at opposite extremes works thematically but not plot wise. Thematically, they represent two ideals that are often at odds with which Flavia balances both extremes out, being scientific but open minded,rational in analyzing patient's concerns but emotional enough to be concerned for their welfare. 

Unfortunately, for the plot of an important love triangle which ends in tragedy, it doesn't quite work when one third of the triangle is portrayed as so much better or worse than the other. Nevian is written for the most part as irredeemable and reprehensible. His interest in science is fascinating but the shameful way that he treats Flavia makes any option of him ending up with her troublesome at best. Seron is clearly the better prospect but that takes out the conflicted possibilities that could have resulted in better characters.

Actually Bella does present a more nuanced triangle in the present between Flavia, Netius, and Lero. Like their predecessors, Netius and Lero also stand on opposite sides of the Romance vs. Reason debate but their positions are more fluid. They often overlap with their views.

While Netius is a physicist and can at times be arrogant, he has an almost poetic affection for zoology and biology, almost recognizing deeper connections in the world around him. He also has enough of an open mind that he understands Flavia's experience and doesn't condescend to her when she tells him what is going on.

Lero is an illustrator with a much more emotional and spiritual side. However, he has a medical awareness as he sketches the human heart. Interestingly enough while Soren is the better prospect for Flavia in the past, Lero somewhat falters in the present. There are times when he behaves very immaturely and crosses boundaries especially after Flavia and Netius become involved.

While Nevian and Soren have the more Renaissance view of characters reflecting one thing or another, Netius and Lero are from a more postmodern view. People in literature are more complex than they were. They are not one thing or another. Sometimes their views and personalities adapt or overlap and that's what Bella displays in the modern era and how she portrays the separate triangles both past and present.

The Mazarine Dreamer is a beautiful poetic experiment that works very well. It takes the themes of reincarnation and love existing through time and finds a new interesting way to tell it. It's not an easy read, but it is well worth it.