Trilogy -: Emerald Earth, Diamond Air, Ruby Fire Witch Brothers Saga: Emerald Earth, Diamond Air, Ruby Fire - Books 1,2,3
LGBTQ Fantasy Fiction. Gay Fiction, Fantasy
Blake Allwood Publishing
June, Aug, Sept 2022
Kindle
200, 200, 230
Amazon
From Book 1: Cursed to never find love, Crea is shocked when he finds the perfect man. Choosing to fight the curse could cost him everything, including his life.
After his father cursed him, Crea has faced decades of dead end relationships. Just as he’s almost given up hope he finds a handsome stranger broken on the side of a desolate road. Once he drops the stranger off at the hospital, he figures all is done. Nothing could be further from the truth. The stranger becomes so much more as he pursues Crea, threatening the curse. Crea learns quickly falling in love is easy, but surviving a nasty cantation that’s determined to destroy you, isn’t as much.
Eli isn’t what you’d call a social person. His love for isolation in his beloved forest fully defines him. After breaking his leg in a mishap, Eli’s life is turned upside down as his life is filled with things he didn’t even dream of having before.
Unfortunately, those dreams turn to nightmares as he and Crea, the man he’s become bonded to, battle a curse that should’ve never been cast.
Crea and Eli’s bonding must be strong enough to overcome the curse, or they could both be lost, forever.
Review by Ulysses Dietz
Member of The Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team
These three books are technically stand-alone, but they are also a trilogy, involving the destinies of three brothers. Adam J. Ridley, Blake Allwood’s altar-ego, has created a fascinating twist on the paranormal romance and given it a mystical setting that is distinctly American. It is a world of witchcraft and wicca living in the wilderness fringes of civilization; a world where nature-bound elemental power is acknowledged—but not always embraced.
The overarching motif of the trilogy is darkness—the darkness of a terrible curse, hurled at three young boys by their politically-ambitious father when he learns that they’re all gay. It’s no spoiler, because it’s in the prologue that Creagan, Lance, and Kyle Franklyn are cursed to never knowing the love of another man. The boys strike back with a curse of their own—denying their father the love of his sons.
It’s quite a set up. Each book focuses on one of the young men, as his destiny draws him inexorably back to the magical landscape of Chemeketa, Oregon, dominated by redwood forests and volcanic peaks. Each of the Franklyn boys must face the consequences of their father’s curse.
Crea, the middle son, in “Emerald Earth,” has become an urban farmer in the midst of the insane real-estate market of San Francisco. On a scouting trip to find an ideal campsite for a reunion of the brothers, he rescues a badly-injured man he finds, literally, by the side of the road.
Lance, the eldest, in “Diamond Sky,” has run the farthest, while ending up a high-powered politician in Oregon. He has to confront the man who became his grandmother’s caretaker in her last years, and who was the only one with her at her death.
Kyle, the baby of the family, in “Ruby Fire,” is a volcanologist in Mexico, forever on the run from both family and personal entanglements, working on an endless PhD and avoiding his brothers. His journey is the weirdest and most complex, entering into unseen dimensions in his native Chemeketa. This volume tips into a sort of magical fantasy, as Kyle faces the ultimate challenge with his brothers by his side.
One thing all three men share is Gwen, their witch grandmother, who took them in when her son cursed her grandsons and threw them out of their home. She is the one constant happy memory they have in common. Given the nature of the trilogy, Gwen is a central character, despite the fact that she’s dead.
Each book is quite different in tone, although they are all linked with common threads. Adam Ridley’s prose is not poetic, but matter-of-fact. The only wonder evoked is that of the beauty of nature, and the allure of the isolated hamlet of Chemeketa. Ridley’s three heroes have all turned their backs on their magical heritage in order to deal with the pain and loss of their father’s curse. They’ve also, quite literally turned their backs on the unspoiled wilderness in which their grandmother raised them and where their family’s history begins. Having been unable to outrun the loneliness caused by the curse, the three find that they have to turn back to their roots to defeat the darkness and find true happiness.
You really need to read all three close together. Plus, to my surprise, there’s a cliffhanger at the end, promising a fourth volume to come.