Review: Salem’s Vengeance Trilogy Books 2 and 3 – Salem’s Fury and Salem’s Legacy by Aaron Galvin

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Aaron Galvin, Amazon, Chilling, Compelling, Great Reading, History, Horror, trilogy, Vengeance Trilogy

I read the two sequels to Salem’s Vengeance together, and they make a chilling and powerful end to a compelling first instalment.  From pillars of a community the Kelly family become outlaws, forced to throw in their lot with others on the fringes, like the Miamiak Indians who take them in.The growing sense of unspeakable wickedness and depravity at the centre of the sufferings of the Kelly family and their fellow survivors from Book 1 Salem’s Vengeance is absolutely gripping.

The second and third books continue the story begun so devastatingly in the first.  The sins of the fathers that have been visited upon the children at such cost must be confronted and overcome at immense price by the essentially innocent.

Book 2, Salem’s Fury, is told largely from the point of view of Rebecca Kelly, younger sister of Sarah.  Brought up among the Miamiak Indians as one of them after the dreadful incidents of book 1, Rebecca has a hazy remembrance of the past.  She loves her life with the Miamiak and considers them her family and her home.  Torn away from this comparative safety by treachery and war among competing Indian tribes, Rebecca is forced to confront the distant past once again if there is to be any hope for a future.  She must sort out for herself what she believes the truth of the past to be from among the ongoing deceit and lies of the survivors of the Salem trials.  She determines on revenge for the crimes perpetrated on her family and their associates, and begins pursuing it relentlessly.

In book 3 Salem’s Legacy, the enormous ripple effect of one man’s unbridled and unprincipled lust for power and lasting fame is a chilling lesson for anyone from any era, that human evil has far reaching consequences.  It goes far beyond the story on the page to become a parable about the power of entrenched evil and the strength required to defy it.

The frightening inextricability of spiritual evil from the human lust that begets it – where does one end and the other begin? – is a powerful meditation on  ‘the wages of sin’.   The chilling scenes of the final confrontation with the person at the centre of the vortex are positively gut-wrenching in their horror.  Their stark presentation of the choice between right and wrong, good or evil, eternal condemnation or salvation is devastatingly clear and horribly simple.

Rebecca feels but dimly connected to the past, but the tentacles extend inevitably towards her as the shadows of the Salem witch trials continue to haunt – and to hunt herself and her loved ones. Sarah is beaten and broken, but Rebecca fights for those left of her family and her beloved Indians, and seeks revenge on those who seek to destroy them.  It is only as she reaches the epicentre of the wickedness that she realises mere selfish vengeance will reduce her to the level of that which threatens all she holds dear.  She has to find another way to overcome the fearful horror once and for all, and that way is selfless not selfish.

At every stage Rebecca struggles to make the right choices according to her lights and at every stage they could go either way.  It is left to Rebecca, supported at the end only by her Indian friend Ciquenackqua, to finish the journey begun in the first book, a horrifying journey of flight, fear, manipulation, violence and ruthless cruelty.

There is a sense almost of numbness and then immense relief rather than triumph when it is all finally over.  Those who live have been purified and strengthened by passing through the fires of terrible tribulation.  And, like the fire burned out, the end of the story is like ash upon the hearth, soft, fine and achingly gentle.

As in the first book, the writing throughout is tight and evocative, intelligent, taut yet liberally sprinkled with lovely lyrical passages. The evocation of Rebecca’s life in the Indian camp is particularly fine, in Book 2 Salem’s Fury.

The characterisation is deep and multidimensional, and there are many fine and wise observations about human nature and the motivations that drive people to particular actions.  The reflections about morality are interesting and salient, and Rebecca’s own journey is very convincing.  Her confrontation of dilemma after dilemma and her courage and clear sense of wanting always to do right is very moving.  The uneasy meld of the two worlds, of the Miamiak Red Banshee and of the settler child Rebecca, is handled with considerable insight, especially with their sometimes apparently contrasting ideas of how justice is best served.  The difference between vengeance and justice is also something that is approached with some thought through Rebecca’s experience.

All in all, a rattling good trilogy, in which each is better than the last, and well worth reading, possibly more than once.

TJ’s Household Haiku Challenge – Glass

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Haiku

TJ gives another great prompt this week, that sparks many ideas.  I have used the ceiling of Galeries Lafayette, another photograph from the camera of my very talented photographer husband to illustrate my take on ‘glass’.  A roof is such a basic part of a building, and I love the idea that engineers, craftsmen and artists can combine their talents to clothe something so functional in extraordinary beauty.  This image has many happy memories of a wonderful, magical holiday with family in the incomparable city of Paris, a place redolent of loveliness – and magnificent stained glass and leadlight –  at every turn.

For those who look up

Soaring glorious elegance

Beauty and shelter

It is but a roof

Art and science make beauty

Glorious union

TJs Household Haiku Challenge 3

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Haiku, T J Paris, TJs Household Haiku Challenge, weekly challenge

Third in the series from TJ Paris.  I love the challenge of the haiku structure!  Here is my humble offering.  I hope TJ doesn’t mind if I use his pictures, they are so evocative.

Life rushes restless,

Ignores the rock of ages

That invites a pause.

I am working! Proof Below.

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Christmas Wishes, Excerpts, Fairy Tale Retelling, Fantasy, Hans Christian Andersen, Happy New Year, romance, the story so far, The Wild Swans, WIP, Work In Progress

I hope my faithful readers have had a most lovely Christmas Day and will have a happy and prosperous 2015.

In between times I HAVE been writing more of my current favourite work in progress, The Swans of the WasteWoods (working title).  Here is an excerpt to prove that I haven’t just been facebooking and reviewing and generally messing about frivolously on the net.  Ahem.

Anyway, the story so far, in my retelling of the Andersen fairy tale The Wild Swans, is that the eleven brothers have been turned into swans by their wicked step mother. Their sister (and, in a little twist added by moi, their sister-in-law) is in the process of breaking the enchantment by remaining mute and spinning and knitting flax into jackets that when thrown over the swans will return them to their human form.

Enjoy.  I’m more than half way through, so hoping to have it edited and off to the publisher by March.  Hoping.

He seized her then and kissed her fiercely, silencing her thoughts.  The new-risen sun pierced through the window and across them both, and with a cry of frustration and pain he began the change.  She had never watched the transformation and it was both beautiful and terrible to see the fusion of man and beast for a moment before the transition was complete.   A swan now perched upon the deep window ledge, while Achlys threw on her gown over her shift and packed the spools of yarn into a secure bundle for him to carry away to Elaine.  Before he took it, the swan touched her cheek gently with his beak.  Then he was away, soaring into the brightening sky to the Kingdom of the West.

No tears.  The voice faded from her head as he became a speck that disappeared in the distance.

She brushed the tears from her cheeks and went down to breakfast.  She was ravenously hungry, and made a good meal before taking up the spindle and distaff again.  Restless still, she went outside, pacing around the clear space before the tower, using the rhythm of the spindle against her thigh to pace her steps.  The tangled roof of trees over all seemed to be thinning for she was sure there was more light and stronger coming through the gaps. Or perhaps spring is closer than I know. Easy to lose track of all time in this place.  So she continued her pacing and spinning far into the day, stopping occasionally for a drink, but anxious to send as much yarn as she could possibly spin with the next prince who arrived.

When the sunlight had stopped angling through the branches and the daylight was faded, she went inside once more.  She did not even sit but made a quick meal of bread and meat.  Then she took a tray and loaded it with viands and took it upstairs to Elaine’s room.  She returned to collect the inevitable spindle and distaff and again mounted the stairs to wait.  Who will it be, she mused idly, biting into an apple as she waited, sitting on Elaine’s bed and listening for the noises that heralded the swan’s arrival.  She would be glad to see any of them.  But she yearned for only one.   She had laid a robe and mantle over the chair near the window for the prince, and soon after sunset, the door opened, and Lucien was revealed.

“Achlys!”  He saw her and strode over to her and seized her in a bear hug and swung round with her in his embrace.   After planting a hearty kiss on both cheeks, he put her down again.  “I have such news to impart to you, but I’m famished.  Any chance of food first?”  She smiled and gestured to the table where she had laid out supper.

He set to with a will.  “I will bank that Blaike has told you no news.  His head is filled with nothing but romantic dreams of late.”  Lucien grinned at her as he swallowed bread and meat, and she felt her cheeks blush.

“But this is the big news.  You will not believe me when I tell you this story.  Did you know you are a half-princess of the south, Achlys?”  She stared at him and then slowly nodded her head.  “And you said nothing!  I cannot tell you how angry I was when I found out.  All those years a servant to us, when you were as good as any of us.  Certainly more than good enough to wed Blaike in all honour.

“The king of the south sent ambassadors to father after son died of fever and left him with no heir.  He was asking after his half-princess daughter, whose mother had been banished to father’s court long ago.”  He took a generous slice of a substantial game pie.  “And now the king of the south has died of the fever also.  The vizier sought the throne now there is no heir, but the nobles voted him down and imprisoned him –” He looked over at her. “You are a half-princess, you have claim.  The nobles of the south wish to have a true heir upon the throne of the SouthKingdom, Achlys.”  She shook her head violently, jumping up and backing away from him waving her hands agitatedly.  “It is your right.  You with Blaike beside you as consort.   When all this is over.”  He shook his head in his turn, slowly.  “It would be a great comfort for father at least to have south and west secure.”

He finished the bread and ham, and scanned the table for more.  As he helped himself to another wedge of the pie, he spoke again.  “All around us the kingdoms are in flux, our friendships thin and doubtful.  The prince of the north watches.  And waits.  There seems no love lost between him and his mother since she cut him out of marrying Elaine.  She refuses to cede his kingdom to him, and seeks to rule his kingdom and ours.”

“There is so much gone awry at home.  The king ails and the queen plots.”  He gestured with a leg of chicken.  “I tell you, the sooner those shirts are finished the better, Achlys.  That woman and her mewling spawn.”  He snorted and took a bite of chicken, then pointed the half-eaten leg at Achlys.  “That child is no son of my father’s.  Ill-begotten imp born of some witchcraft.  The twins watch the queen day and night as she croons and fusses over the ugly little creature.  But at least she leaves father alone more now.”

He stuffed ham between two hunks of bread.   Achlys came to the table and sliced cheese and pickled cucumbers for him, and he nodded in thanks and added them, then lifted the whole to his mouth and took an enormous bite.

“But he still seems bewitched by her.  There is no accounting for it.”

Achlys smiled a little sadly in response, and shook her head slightly.  You do not know love, brother.  I understand the king now when I did not before.