Stevan Allred is a favorite author, so I was excited when his new book came out even though it is not the kind of book I usually read. After reading it I'm wondering why I don't read more fantasy novels!

He is a master writer paying attention to every detail. To disclose, I studied with Stevan when he was one of the Dangerous Writers (with Tom Spanbauer) in Portand. I love his description at the back of the book, he got up early each morning before the sun rose, lit a candle and wrote into the day. He has crafted a spirtual world with talking birds that turn human, a serpent that ate the spirtual world and sits on a log that is the earth we know! The earth of course is at risk of being eaten as well. Birds talk and turn into full characters: a cormorant, a pelican, a frigate bird, a raven, and of course a fertility goddess who flies.

There are two humans, a fisherman who goes to the Isle of the Dead, in this spirit world, to find his beloved who has died. The Raven has taken over and he is a vindictive narcissist, but will bargain and he is an obstacle to be overcome. The fisherman gets his beloved's soul, in the form of all souls, a clam, that must be nursed by breast milk to be reborn.

The fertility goddess, Dewi Sri, has been sent on a mission to save earth and she provides the milk and the sexual espinage that ensues. She provides liberated, transcendant sexuality that we witness in this other world that is also full of jealously and emotions that accompany such goings on.

Of course a soul released from a body does not hold memory, so the beloved does not remember the fisherman. She holds memories in her physical body but not her brain. The raven is a stud as well as a crook. I don't want to spoil this, but the world is saved by the efforts of this group and there is much about courage and true love to encounter in this brilliant writing of time travel, and mythic proportion. It may be too X rated to make it into a movie, but a good movie it would make.