Monday Meditation: The Quickening, by Ly De Angeles (Book Club invitation)

I have a strong connection to crows. One of them keeps following on my walks every day. He reminds me of Ly De Angele's book, The Quickening". In that book, crows guard the main character. I am about to start up a book club on this book next month, so if you're interested, be sure you let me know via email. A purchase of the book will be required, as well as a Facebook account.

Below is a 'reprint' of an article I wrote about it during my "Love of Ly" week.


Many of us fell in love with the characters she introduced in her book, "When I See the Wild God"- Hunter, Brighid, Willlie, Rowan, Puck, etc... and when this book came out, a squeal of delight was heard throughout the Lyverse of fandom. She takes the characters on an amazing adventure, and we get to come along too! Each of us found ourselves in at least one of the folks described, and wondered if we didn't also get a glimpse of Ly as well in here. When I need to reconnect, this is one of my go-to books. The great news is that she's updated and expanded this edition!

Copyright note: The excerpt below is copyrighted to the author and shared here with her permission. To protect her rights, all copy/paste has been disabled  on this blog. I'm sure you understand.


The Quickening


Description from Amazon.com: The Quickening (Magical realism): Most people see the Irish Travellers as a ragged bunch of musicians, artists, and fortune-tellers crossing the country in an old double-decker bus in the new land, in the twenty first century, but these people are a secret. They are a race older than time, the Sídhe, the Fair Folk, almost immortal. On an unforgettable night of murder and mayhem, Kathryn Shilton meets the Travellers and her life changes forever. She and her witch friend Merrin help the Sídhe find the ones responsible for the bombs, fires, and terror wrought on the Southside of New Rathmore. When Hunter’s son, a child of immense magical power, is kidnapped by members of Michael Blacker's Fundamentalist Christian cult all hell breaks loose. But no one knows what’s really going on and who or what are the powers behind both sides in a struggle against bigotry and hate. Except, perhaps, a conspiracy of ravens.


Prologue


Hunter climbed the steep sides of the ancient hill fort, deserted now except fo the ring of low standing stones and the barrow to which the king stone pointed. He sat down with his back against the tallest of the menhir as the twilight lengthened shadows into mysteries.

He'd said all this before, but it helped him get his grounding in the magic.

"Lady?" he called to the dusk. "You here yet?" No answer. He would wait. She'd show up-she usually did when he reminded her of his travels and just how tired he was. In the meantime he'd just talk.

"It's me again," he said softly," and I’ve wandered the great forests of oak and rowan and birch, oh yes I have, knee deep in stone and bracken. And none have taken me down. I was heedless of fear, because the forest was everywhere, and we were so much a part of it all. Do you remember, my Lady?"

The air became a listening thing- still and tense as he reminded it of smells it used to know.

"Now it all hides- what's left of it-and fear is very real amongst the survivors. You know? Proud? Silent? Desperate? Through their blood they can't forget; through our blood, Lady! Through the Mysteries!"
His boot slid out and rustled the loose stones.

"Sorry. Sometimes I get maudlin, yeah? Sorry about that. It's just that people seem so blind, you know? So blind to the repercussions of their needs for comfort and safety that they mostly don't realize the devastating effects that their not-knowing is having on the habitats of others who are not quite so voracious."

There was a shifting of the air as if a piece of night was manifesting from the twilight in just one part of the ring. Hunter pretended to ignore it, knowing what it was, but he talked to her anyway.

"Hey, you know? Willie and Matt and Jack and I have just come back from spending time with a couple hundred of the true people. You know what they do? They stay, day in and day out, defiant before the machine giants sent to take down 'set percentage' of old growth forest. The media was there, too, on and off, for the show, depicting the tale of the joke of the unwashed chaining themselves to the graters and each other as they attempted to stop the devastation-fair enough- who would be clean under the conditions they had to put up with?"

"But of course, you and I both know how it works. Balanced journalism and all that."

"Are you there, Lady?"

"I'm here Hunter." And the darkness gathered itself into form.

Autumn Equinox, the previous year- It's very late. The sky is huge and black and moonless and glittering with a million, billion stars accentuated in their brilliance by the late autumn frost.

We're all out around the remnants of the Feast of the Fire. Brighid lays the offering of food out over at the tree-line for the creatures of the forest as Hunter and Puck share out the last of the mead with the rest of us and pour some to the earth as a blessing to the land.

Everyone is quietly excited as Hunter raises the ancient horn to his lips…


There are two versions of this book. The one our book club will be reading is the up to date version from 2012.

You can purchase this treasure from Amazon right here. It's also available in Kindle format :)

Please do visit Ly at her website: LyDeAngeles.com

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