Underwhelmed by my first ED novel :(
It had such potential and I was excited to read it as I'd just spent a week immersed in vespers and compline at the Glenstal monastery in Co. Limerick, Ireland. Haven is a religious/environmental story, a fictionalized account of the first monks to settle on Skellig Michael in the 7th century. I found it a bit tedious, to be honest, everything is over-described, overemphasized, and events belaboured. A religious zealot, Artt, has a dream and takes two monks, Cormac and Trian, with him to establish a monastery on a barren island. For the two, nature is God's most beautiful language but for Artt, everything on this 'ship to heaven' has been put there for their personal use and soon they're slaughtering seabirds to use for fuel as there are no trees. It gets dark and savage a la William Golding and they plunder the place on Artt's orders - a vow of obedience preventing Cormac and Trian from standing up to him. It's got all your typical Christian ideology, you know, that ordinary people are stinking sinners, and hardship is merely god landing loving blows on his children. The holy trinity resembles your average dysfunctional family: controlling father, pacifying mother and traumatized child.
I kept waiting for the story to start but it mostly felt like an info dump on medieval gadgetry, medicinal herbs and plants etc. Wouldn't recommend it.