Dawnbringer: Lightborn

Lightborn is the standalone centerpiece of the Dawnbringer series of novels and the narrative heart of the Tales of Irándiel. This world is a lifelong fruit of both love and wonder, born of the desire that through the mysterious power of imagination and story the primordial light may shine to give solace and consolation, to stir our hearts to awe and lighthearted gratitude, and to awaken the compassion that embraces the world in both its brokenness and its beauty.

This is not a fantasy novel in the contemporary sense, but an act of contemplation through storytelling, taking its place firmly within the age-old tradition of exploring the meaning of reality through myth. It is a way of enacting, through the work of mythopoeia, both philosophia and theologia. It is a way of exploring, in other words, both the love of wisdom and the mystery of God.

This does not mean, of course, that the world and its characters and the dramatic events of the narrative do not exist for their own sake and in their own right. Rather, I have fallen in love with them again and again over the years, and it is my humble hope that upon entering into the world of Irándiel through these pages, you too may come to love these persons so like ourselves in their joys and their sorrows, in their hopes and their struggles, and may see refracted through the prism of this co-created world, lovingly woven in detail both epic and intimate, the beauty of the real world that we all share—a world bathed in the radiance of the light at the origin of all things and the love that has sung the universe into existence.

More information on the books below, but here are some links.

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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 384,250 words, which is short for the genre, at 83-105,000 words a book (as a comparison Tolkien’s The Hobbit is 95,000 words and the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy 481,103).*