J.M. Hofer delivers page-turning tales of lust, power and sorcery in her award-winning first novel, Islands in the Mist, and its sequels. Set in post-Roman Britain and steeped in Welsh legend, her stories bring to life the times just before the arrival of King Arthur. In Islands in the Mist, we meet the great warrior, Bran, who is called home from the battlefield to his mother’s deathbed. He honors her final wish by vowing to solve the mystery of what fatally attacked her and the clan’s chieftain in the night. Though many have dismissed it as a wolf attack, she insists it was not, and encourages him to seek the counsel of Talhaiarn, druid advisor to their clan. On his journey, Bran encounters the fiery Lucia, widow to a Roman centurion, and her strangely-gifted stable boy, Gwion–an enigmatic child graced with understanding beyond his years. Lucia possesses and “the Sight, and ” an ability that has plagued her from the time she was a small girl, tormenting her with disturbing visions of events that invariably come to pass. Fate leads her to discover many of her maternal ancestors were masterful women gifted with similar psychic abilities and that some of them have been watching her from the shadows for years. Upon returning to his village, Bran finds himself at odds with the hot-tempered Aelhaearn, who is determined to become their clan’s next chieftain. To Aelhaearn’s disappointment, Bran’s sister, Seren, now priestess in her mother’s place, convinces the clan to choose Bran for the honor instead. In the aftermath of their conflict, Bran discovers something shocking about his rival that causes him to rue his sister’s decision. They must all work together, however, to defeat the creator of their nocturnal enemies–a creator who, one by one, is patiently pulling all who oppose her deep into the seductive maelstrom of her power. Awards Publicity: Islands in the Mist was one of the top five fantasy novels chosen out of two-thousand in the 2013 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest. Portland Book Review by Jonathan Stark Welsh fantasy meets gritty realism in J.M. Hofer’s Islands in the Mist, the first in a planned trilogy of novels. The first book focuses on the plight of four powerful tribes being targeted by the sorceress Cerridwen, who has created an army of the undead using the Black Cauldron and her powerful magic. She is opposed by Bran, warrior of the north, and by Lucia and Gwion, two magically gifted individuals who have a connection to the mysterious island where Cerridwen was born. Ancient weapons, powerful spirits, and figures from Celtic legend all twist together in an epic adventure to figure out Cerridwen’s true plans and put a stop to them. The best feature of Islands in the Mist is its aesthetic. Hofer describes a rich world, painting a detailed Celtic environment that doesn’t feel far removed from a real-life Ireland, Norway, or Gaelic countryside. The story travels: from dark forests to lonely beaches, from spiritual planes to the underworld. If this were a video game, it would be Skyrim. It is an open world filled with folklore, begging for adventure. At the same time, it contains enough references to real historical events (the Romans, for instance, play a minor, but important, role in the story) that it gains a touch of magical surrealism. Like Tolkien’s Middle Earth, this world just might have existed on the periphery of our legends.

Islands in the Mist (Islands in the Mist Series #1) PDF

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