After a near-fatal crash in the Scottish Highlands, Ben, an ex-army major with a passion for protecting the innocent, dreams of previous deaths. Visited by a mysterious stranger who puts him into a series of trances to reveal more of his past, he stops the sessions after seeing his fiancée burned as a witch.
Trinity of Souls
Ben’s doctor, Susan, is driven by her desire to care for people. Strangely drawn to Ben, she shares a vision in which they are drowned as human sacrifices. Still disoriented, she agrees to accompany new colleague, Lord Mortimer, to a conference in Dubai. There the lord imprisons her in his desert villa where he demonstrates how he has achieved immortality by consuming a man’s soul, telling her she will be next.
Sharing more past experiences while fighting to stay alive in the present, Susan and Ben must endure unspeakable horrors across millennia to discover the clues they need to survive; to find each other, and to challenge their nemesis. From ancient Egypt to the D-Day landings; from the African slave trade to punk rock; a multitude of lives lived, culminating in a single moment. All as the sinister Mortimer, destroyer of souls, lies in wait.
The Author
Carl Bayley is a tax writer turned storyteller. He was chairman of the Tax Faculty of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales and former member of the institute’s board and council. He has been writing a series of successful plain English tax guides since 2002 including, at one time, the best-selling print on demand publication in the UK. Carl lives in the Scottish Borders and Trinity of Souls is his debut novel.
Carl explains: “The concept of doomed lovers bound together across time first came to me when a work colleague told me how she was approached in a nightclub (in Edinburgh in the 1990s) by a man who apologised for how he had apparently abandoned her in the 1640s but, as he explained, he had been killed in battle before he could return. My colleague even said she recognised him. This gave me the idea for a story about a tragic couple meeting time and again throughout the ages, but always being kept apart. Later, during a long walk on Skye, I began formulating some of the past life experiences these souls might have, and the first notion of how I might pull it all together into a book.”
“Many elements of the story have their own inspiration. For example, in the prologue, Ben crashes in the Highlands when a stag walks out in front of his speeding car. This is based on personal experience: I once came close to hitting a group of red deer crossing the road as I was driving over Rannoch Moor. Ironically, I was returning from a trip to Skye where I had just spent a weekend with the same friend I first met the day I began formulating Trinity of Souls.”
What we thought:
This is a clever and believable written novel. Carl Bayley has used a mixture of his life experiences with the belief in rebirth and reincarnation but included the potential horrors that could befall a soul in these situations. An addictive story that draws the reader completely in, that raises hope while in the background lurks utter despair. which will win out?
RELEASE DATE: 28/01/2024 ISBN: 9781805142140 Price: £9.99
Tagged in fantasy