| ||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. Learn more. |
Product details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Jane, still heartbroken after the loss of her true love, Thomas of Norwich, the time-trapped Kinsman we first met in the previous novel, has reached the haven of Corlay and is fast reaching the end of her pregnancy. Meanwhile, the dreaded Grey Falcons of the Roman Church are still jostling for power under the twisted guiding hands of their leader, Bishop Simon, and his master Cardinal Constant of York - the very man who long ago oversaw and directed the murder of the Boy Piper at the gates of York. Safe in the chateau at Corlay and under the protection of the Queen of the broken French islands of the Drowned World, Jane has been befriended by Alison and supported through her pregnancy by Brother Francis - the same Francis who was sent out into the world by Constant to investigate and discredit the burgeoning faith of Kinship that arose after the death of the Piper.
But all is not well in the Church and the Seven Kingdoms of the islands once known as Britain. Kinship, despite the terrible persecution of its few hundred believers by the Falcons, still survives and has found a safe refuge in Corlay. There they live a quiet and peaceful life offering help and support to all who ask for it and slowly but surely spreading the idea of Kinship across Europe. It cannot be allowed to stand and together with his subordinate Simon, Cardinal Constant plots both the destruction of Corlay and the complete usuraption of all political, as well as religious, power throughout the Seven Kingdoms. In blood and fire, they move to achieve the destruction of both Corlay and the Kings of Britain.
By a miracle, both Jean and Francis are aided once again by the MAgpie and survive the destructive whim of Constant. Jane finally gives birth to her long-awaited son, Thomas the Piper, and escapes to the quiet island of Quantock where she herself was born. Thought dead by all the Kinsmen, Jane and Thomas are at last safe with the Magpie and her friend Alsion. For years, they live quietly but all the while knowing that Jane is still considered to have beenthe long-prophesied Bride of Time, the Madonna of Kinship and foretold mother of the Star-Born, the Child of the Bride of Time, who will bring some form of glory to the world through Kinship itself. Francis, thinking Jane and the Child lost, has had his own revelation and works tirelessly to sweep away the old Church to which he himself was once a faithful servant and has manoevered whole countries to accept the new doctrine as the official faith.
In this strained, but secure, atmosphere young Thomas the Piper grows up with his friends and family. This book tells of his early years, from birth to his eventual training as a musician by the Kinsmen at the reborn Corlay, now centre of the new faith. We read of his struggles with the faith, his ideas of what Kinship truly is and the way that the new faith has become a modern mirror of the old. Still bearing his father's pipes, the very same pipes once made by Morfedd the Wizard for the Boy himself, young Thomas finally travels into the world to find his own Kinship. The book tells us for the first time about Kinship itself - what it is, what it may be and what it can do. We see for the first time that the faith of the people may not be the same as the faith of the Boy and even more so that the faith of the Boy may not have been the faith that was taught him by the old man Morfedd who taught the Boy to play.
Here we see a glipse of what the Dream of Kinship is and what it may achieve. Even more than the first book, this is a read you cannot deny yourself. One day, I have no doubt, this series will rival even magnificent literary works like the Lord of the Rings or Dune. Buy it now, while there are still copies to be had!
"A Dream of Kinship" takes place 18 years after the events at the gates of York described in the "Piper" and follows Thomas of Norwich, one of the Boy Piper's followers, as he tries to make his way from the shattered islands of a far-future Drowned Britain to the distant castle of Corlay in Brittany. Disaster befalls Thomas betwee the Quantock and Blackdown hills of Devon and Somerset - divided islands in a new Somersea in the drowned Britian of this far-flung future world - and he is cast overboard to drown in the sea above Taunton.
There, no doubt, he would drown were it not for the intervention of a mind from the far past of the 20th century - a mind that is as lost and faces as much danger as does Thomas himself. These two people, a drowned religious pilgrim from the future and a dying scientist from the far past, are locked together in a strange embrace that keeps them both alive for the duration of the novel - but at a terrible cost.
A third hero enters the tale in the form of Brother Francis, the private investigator of a senior member of the Catholic Church, who is sent to uncover the truth about this strange new religion of the Boy, known as "Kinship". Quickly, he becomes aware that Thomas of Norwich may be carrying a priceless cargo with him to Corlay: the document of prophecy written by the Boy's own teacher, Morfedd the Wizard. As is ever the case with such envoys of the Church, Francis faces a terrible risk in coming so close to a contest between religions and soon finds himself enraptured by Kinship and now searching for Morfedd's Testament for his own reasons.
Here, finally, the novel becomes clear for though Thomas of Norwich and Brother Francis are so very different they are both captured by the prophecy of the Testament - Thomas, because he carries it towards Corlay and Francis because he, almost alone in the world, begins to understand its meaning. A meaning that seems to have something to do with Thomas, with the strange spirit from the past before the Drowning, with the girl Jane who rescues Thomas from the sea and even with Brother Francis himself.
Are they truly heroes in the world, making their way on their own journeys? Are they each great players in a burgeoning new religion? Are they captives of a wizardly prophecy? What is the nature of their strange connection and who or what is the mysterious "Child of the Bride of Time"?
Get this book. Read it. Read it again. Then put it away for a while and read it again. It is magnificent, powerful, glorious and fantastic. True, it is an early example of Cowper's work and is not as well-written as the later stories, but here we see the breadth of imagination that makes great writers remembered far beyond their own lifetimes.
This book may not be remembere with fondness or kindness by its readers - it is too disturbing for that - but it will be remembered when other writers are all but forgotten. It is one of the great books of the 20th century. Buy it now!
