Angel Caste - Complete 5 Book Series
The Story
Read as a single book or as five separate books: Angel Blood, Angel Breath, Angel Bone, Angel Bound, Angel Blessed.
A troubled half-angel, a beautiful angel guide, a binding promise . . .
Viv is on day release from jail to attend the funeral of the thug she thinks is her father, when she comes face to face with her real father, the powerful angel Archae Kald. If finding out she is a half-angel is not shocking enough, Viv discovers her mother is not dead after all but lost somewhere in the tangle of worlds called the Rynth.
Determined to find her mother, the only person who has ever truly loved her, Viv goes to Kald’s angel world where he appoints the beautiful Thris as her guide. Thris is kind and caring, unlike the males Viv has known before, but after living on the streets, Viv finds it almost impossible to trust.
Friendship grows as Thris trains her to travel the rifts, but the Rynth is a dark and dangerous place, even for angels and, as Thris grows increasingly tempted by Viv’s emerging angel traits, disaster strikes.
Viv journeys on alone and stumbles into a war zone where she finds a lost child. She pledges to take the child to safety but, as the war rages on, deciding who is friend and who is enemy becomes a deadly game of chance.
Bound by his promise to guide Viv to her mother, Thris embarks on a desperate search for her, but a greater threat confronts them both and, in the end, they must fight not just for their own lives, but for the lives of those they love.
The Idea
The Angel Caste series follows Viv’s search for belonging. She is half human and half angel which represents the idea that we are all part flesh and part spirit and that these parts are often in conflict. Viv (not the usual fantasy character’s name) is an acronym of her mother’s name, her grandmother’s name and her great grandmother’s name: Violet, Iris, Vacia. Her mother’s name is shortened to Lettie, and Viv is also named Violet, but always called Viv after those of her female line. There is an important reason for this in the story.
The Secondary World
Viv is Australian and the series begins in a small country town in Victoria, Australia which , along with the rest of our world and outer space, is know as Moonsun Fold by Ezam Fold’s angels. Moonsun and Ezam Folds are just two of the countless folds (worlds) that exist in the Rynth. Viv visits a variety of different folds during her journeys (described on the individual book pages of this website).
The Music
I did not write Angel Caste to music, but London Grammar’s If you wait seems to reflect much of Viv’s struggle in the story (and Ataghan’s too).
Deep Fantasy
Many readers will notice that Ezam is an anagram of maze: a puzzle that relies on rational thought to solve, as walkers navigate by working out which routes remain unblocked. This very different from a labyrinth which is a meditative journey, hence labyrinth’s association with the countless worlds of the Rynth. Ezam’s all male angels have traditionally male-gendered attributes of logic and competitiveness while the all female angels of Erath Fold (Erath is an anagram of heart) have traditionally female-gendered attributes of love/nurturing and connection.
Ezam’s younger angels (Dane) test themselves in trials of physical strength and more senior angels through debates. All angels suppress what they deem to be base emotions: fear, jealousy, hatred, anger and lust which they believe inhibit transcendence (which literally means to rise above the divisions of earthly existence and so become whole). This reflects Viv’s struggle to find wholeness by reconciling her angelic and human parts. In a sense, this is the symmetry that angels seek.
Ezam’s landscape is highly symmetrical and angels harmonise regularly to keep their bodies in alignment, that is, as symmetrical as possible. Viv’s arrival disrupts Ezam's ordered predictability but the change that angels crave cannot occur if things remain the same.
Happy reading.