Dawnbringer: Lightborn

Lightborn is the centerpiece of the Dawnbringer series of novels set in the world of Irándiel, upon the small continent of Telmérion, cold and rugged and yet inhabited since the beginning of human history by the first family of humankind. Though the setting is high fantasy—a work of co-creative imagination fashioning a mythical world with its own history and geography—the plot and the ins-and-outs of the world are deeply realistic, portraying as it were an ancient and long-forgotten past of our own world. Or more precisely, what is offered here is a mythical exposition of the true past that we all share—with very little magic or other fantasy tropes, but with a great deal of “magic,” in other words, a world filled with wonders and terrors of all kinds, from the ancient guardians of the world, the Anaíon, to vicious and deadly beasts such as dragons, eötenga, and vru’ádach. The characters thus find themselves caught in the cosmic battle between light and darkness, between the weakness of love and the power of hate, which casts its rays and its shadows also into the heart of every man and woman. The journey marked out before their feet calls for integrity, fidelity, and heroism, and also something more, something that lies at the heart of every good adventure and every life, and which is the very measure of man.

More information on the books below, but here are some links. (Note that the online text included on this site is currently not up to date in some of the changes in naming, for example vru’adach and Irandiel, though the narrative itself is the most updated version. The PDF and the print are final.)

Online Text of the Book

PDF Download of the Series

Link to the Page for the Print Book

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There are four books included in this collection as a single volume:

A Song for Nirániel

When Eldárien returns to his homeland after many years away—burdened by the awareness that he has perpetrated great evil at the hands of an Empire whose knight he has become—he encounters a continent riven by strife and war and threatened by creatures even more horrifying, born of the very darkness itself. He wishes to lay aside the sword, to leave behind a past marked with violence and bloodshed, but he also longs to aid his people against the forces that endanger their very existence. Yet such a path he cannot walk alone, facing obstacles both within and without, and in this first volume the stage is set: in which friends and companions are found, and an enemy encountered who is far more dangerous than could have ever been imagined.

A Song for Ristfánd

Following on the events of the first volume, the catalyst of which now becomes a consuming conflagration, the War of Darkness begins in earnest. And in the shadow of the forces here revealed, the tension of the civil war and the threat of the power-hungry Empire pales almost into insignificance. Light and darkness are laid bare in their true nature, though one is frail and faltering, weak and vulnerable, while the other appears all but invincible and uncontainable. But they lie hidden in every heart. Thus suspicions and fears arise even among those who stand to fight the encroaching forces; but so, too, capacities for love and heroism are also stirred into flame in the most humble and hidden hearts, summoning them forth to answer the desperate cries of a civilization on the brink of chaos, conflict, and even collapse.

A Song for Eldáru

Bearing questions in their hearts, the five companions continue their journey with pain and sorrow behind them and hope ahead of them. But with every passing day the land of Telmérion continues to spiral into chaos and strife. They seek answers, answers ancient and forgotten, in the only place that they know to look, but will these answers be enough to confront the ever more tangible darkness and otherworldly violence that descends upon their people? Or shall the secrets that are revealed prove to be a greater burden even than the questions? Or rather shall they truly be a light in darkness, a hope in despair, that can carry and lead them even when they return anew to the conflict to which their hearts are inexorably being drawn, even unto the final confrontation in which the fate of their world shall be decided?

A Song for Telmérion

This is the final of four parts in the Dawnbringer series, bringing to a conclusion the dramatic events unfolding in prior volumes. The War of Darkness now draws on to its highest intensity and its climax, and the forces of humanity are marshalled against their mysterious and dreadful foe. Here an evil that until now has remained elusive, even as it inflicts destruction, is unveiled in all its horror; and yet in the same moment the path to its very heart is made known, and the possibility of a true confrontation between light and darkness, bearing hope of redemption even when all other hopes falter and all other lights go out.

*The story told in these novels is both rich in detail and succinct in expression, sitting at 374,025 words, which is short for the genre, at 85-100,000 words a book (as a comparison Tolkien’s The Hobbit is 95,000 words and the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy 481,103).*