In a retro-future world, the continents of our planet have been reduced to ruined wastelands after a thousand years of war between Heaven and Earth. The war began ten years on from our present time, when human medical scientists pushed over the boundary between life and death, resuscitated a human brain, discovered the reality of a Heavenly afterlife and ended up fighting against the angels. Now, Earth’s military forces are composed of artificially created Humen, while the original human beings have been reduced to a mere survival existence, living in fearful, isolated tribes.
Miriael is the angel who was shot down, fell to Earth and miraculously survived; Ferren is the young tribesman who found her. Together they’ve been building a Residual Alliance of human tribes willing to cast off their slavish ‘alliance’ to the Humen and stand up for themselves.
In Ferren and the Invaders of Heaven, the Residual Alliance is almost ready to act, but the Humen find themselves a new leader and act first. Asmodai is a traitor angel far more dangerous than any Humen ‘Doctor’, and brings his own special powers to reinforce the secret weapons of Earth’s armies. With Asmodai in charge, the Humen launch their long-planned invasion of Heaven.
Asmodai also has a particular interest in Miriael, who once fell in love with him. She has to untangle her new, human-like feelings, while Ferren has to sort out his own tangled feelings when Zonda reappears. Now he must deal with that past relationship while working through his new feelings for Kiet, which have become more than feelings of ordinary friendship.
The third book of the trilogy contains shocks and betrayals, a desperate pursuit, close encounters with the highest archangels, an amazing journey up to Heaven, and the wonders and terrors of terra-celestial warfare. The final battle in Heaven will be the turning point that decides the entire thousand-year war.
The world of the novel draws on traditional angelology, as preserved especially in not-quite-orthodox texts such as the Christian Apocrypha, the Judaic Kabala and the writings of the Sufi mystics. This beautiful, fascinating, half-forgotten lore comes to life in the Ferren books as Celtic, Norse and other mythologies have come to life in many fantasies. But this is still imaginative fiction, not religious fiction, and carries no religious message.
From the author of Worldshaker, an extraordinary dystopia of angels and apocalypse.
Targeted Age Group:: Young Adult and upwards
What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
The inspiration for the trilogy was a single generative spark – it came out of a dream. Seriously! I dreamed I was under a blanket, then peeked out and saw uncanny, moving lights in the night sky and heard ominous, inexplicable sounds. Suddenly I knew – the way you can know things in dreams, as though someone had told you – that this was the great war going on between the armies of Heaven and the armies of Earth.
I was still watching when one of the lights came hurtling down out of the sky straight towards me.
That was the moment I woke up, but I was still in that drowsy, not fully conscious state when you come out of a dream too quickly. And I thought to myself, ‘That must have been an angel shot down and crashing to the Earth. And she must have landed very close by. Perhaps she’s dead or perhaps she’s injured.’
I thought some more about it as I came to full consciousness. One thing I thought was, ‘I’ve been given the start of a novel.’ And so I had! It took me decades to fill out the background behind that first scene, decades of research and story-planning, many, many drafts and versions. But through every draft and version, one thing always stayed the same: the opening scene. With Ferren the protagonist taking my place, the first ten pages of Ferren and the Angel have never varied. They were just handed to me on a plate! Ferren sees Miriael shot down and fall to the Earth; next morning, he goes out to investigate.
The third book, Ferren and the Invaders of Heaven, grew very naturally out of the two before. All the elements were in place for building up to a tremendous Humen invasion of Heaven – yet so many elements hadn’t been planned for that purpose at all. The Morphs, the angel Asmodai and Miriael falling in love with him, the past world history including the Weather Wars and the fallen angels allowed back up into Heaven – I’d never guessed at the role those elements would play. Yet it was if they were just there waiting to play it! It’s a great feeling for a writer when that happens – a feeling of inevitability, as though the story has taken over with a life of its own and is unfolding all by itself.
How Did You Come up With Your Characters?
Ferren is me, I guess – stubborn, curious, rebellious, idealistic and sometimes a bit slow on the emotional uptake.. But he's probably a whole lot braver than I'd ever be if I fell into some of the terrifying situations he falls into!
Miriael is a spiritual being, so I couldn't draw directly on any real life person for her. But I could draw indirectly on moments of real experience – expanded a hundredfold! Because Miriael has fallen to Earth and been fed mortal food, she despises physical life and hates the bodily sensations that she’s feeling for the first time ever. Then, later on, she discovers mortal feelings and even person-to-person love for the first time, never quite knowing what she’s experiencing.
I could relate that – distantly but definitely – and I hope I can persuade readers to empathise too!
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