Sins of the Father

Bowen is an orphaned child in feudal England whose first appearance in this novel is having been bound hands and feet and whipped mercilessly by the monks in a monastery in an excess of bloodlust. He’s realistically of an indeterminate age but no more than about seven years old and the monks are very sadistic. He’s punished repeatedly for any number of minor and inconsequential infractions. Bowen’s father and mother and sister are dead. His sister was the victim of a brutal rape in which she became pregnant and died shortly after giving birth though she had been returned to her parents’ home in a beaten and catatonic state. His father drowned and his mother burned to death in the family home. Aaron is a minister in present day Midwest America who takes a short sabbatical after he has a fainting episode while experiencing the marks of the stigmata immediately preceding a sermon that he’s supposed to deliver about Faith Unending, a concept with which he’s struggling himself. Aaron is continuously having episodes of a fugue like state or altered consciousness in which he’s catapulted back in time. He sees Bowen whipped by the monks and is compelled to take the whipping on himself which in turn leads Bowen to have to leave the monastery where the sadistic monks are calling for his death, citing devil possession. Lucian is a severely autistic child in the present day who’s found homeless and taken to a mental health center after a fire in an abandoned building in which he’s sleeping. He’s horribly scarred and disfigured and bears a striking resemblance to Bowen and Aaron. He takes a liking of a sort to Aaron, who has eyes of the same amethyst color as his. He also bears a mark on his chest which looks like a brand and is the mark of the Celtic war god Rudianos. Lucian has a horrible aversion to religious symbols, only speaks Welsh and then only in riddles and in a cold, hateful voice not like a child, “The guardian lives. The gate has been opened. The sins of the father borne upon the son. Vengeance thirsts for blood. The sacrifice must be made.” He also tends to say, “Bless the child, save the child.” All this starts to make sense, along with the rash of fires that follows Lucian wherever he goes when Aaron finds out that Bowen and Lucian are the same person. Lucian/Bowen’s father awoke an ancient evil whose service he had the strong desire to use for revenge but he didn’t understand that said evil thirsts for living blood and the dead blood of the sister, who

שנה

2012

הוצאה

Rachel Palmer

מהדורות

1

עמודים

444

ISBN

9781475277432

מקור הנתונים: Wikidata