New Moons: The Seed Songs, Book One by Nancy Ashmead
Background art: Lotus Life by Nancy Ashmead, acrylic on canvas; used with permission of the artist
It’s 800 years in the future, and an interstellar odyssey is underway. Earth had become too toxic for habitation 700 years prior, triggering a mass migration known as the Ascendency. A group of indigenous people had prepared for this day, gathering together a set of mysterious artifacts to accompany the journey. Their purpose? To awaken the talents of the Emissary, the one who, according to the Prophecy, would ultimately correct the course of humanity toward a new peace and prosperity.
The former Earthlings have been living for generations now on huge passenger spaceships that have become their new home in a faraway star system, and in their midst, a teenager named Mellinar is having strange dreams and visions. Could she be the Emissary foretold so long ago?
The fantastic worlds of New Moons: The Seed Songs, Book One (Black Rose Writing) by Nancy Ashmead extends to different universes in outer space, and just as far into inner space. We accompany the reluctant Mellinar as she undergoes the “Emissary Trials,” part of a series of mysterious, nearly forgotten rituals. These rituals can only be performed through intuitive insight — and must be interpreted using prophetic dreams that can be accessed via the indigenous artifacts. Inducing a kind of dream state, the rituals are designed to help locate information hidden inside the participants’ own minds.
A TALE OF INNER AND OUTER SPACE
Ashmead’s crafty combination of outer and inner space, and the explorations taking place in both, invites insightful parallels. Along the way there is continual adventure for Mellinar, as she is chosen to be Emissary, travels to Earth, and experiences insect-eating, mind-melding with a tree, and dolphin riding. Yet with all its fantasy, the book succeeds in making sense within its own universe and has its own coherent logic. Ideally, fantasy fiction will weave a narrative of fantastic events and describe fantastic things in such a way that the reader feels a satisfying sense that there is a truth being revealed, that a moral, poetic, or esoteric correctness is being observed in the tale’s telling. New Moons has this. It succeeds in creating its own esoteric authenticity.
For example, while on Earth, Mellinar encounters a power entity called The Oni, which is an earthquake-causing force working to digest the toxins of human pollution. These forces also trigger Mellinar’s spiritual development and prophetic vision. The metaphorically connected subterranean and subconscious aspects are linked with the correctness of dream logic to convey the alchemical transformation of character:
“Yes, and I also had horrific experiences. It changed me the way it can change chemical compounds,” she went on. “I experienced it in my body and beyond my body, but I can’t explain how I’m different. I just know I’m different from what I was before.”
A SOCIETY BOUND BY HIERARCHY AND FULL OF TREACHERY
Meanwhile, a contrasting drama of greed and ego is taking place within the spaceship elite, a power struggle involving blackmail and murder. Life onboard the spaceships is recognizably corporate and oppressive. A caste system has developed with gross inequality and restrictions of rights, and there is bitter infighting and unrest. As one character describes it, “so many people crammed together yet cut off from each other, marginally alive, not thriving. There is much loneliness, frustration, bitterness, and buried anger.”
There is much work to be done to fix all that’s become broken.
Fortunately, Mellinar has help. She teams up with Vedano, a young man from Earth who gets a taste of life off of his home planet. The contrast between indigenous and off-planet existence is explored through the two characters as they become empathic talent scouts for their “sacred seed” project, identifying others whose consciousness can be elevated in much the same way as Mellinar’s has been. Along the way, they are helped by a shapeshifting man/raven named Midigini. The three of them telepathically conduct a sort of civil rights movement, following directions derived from their vision-inducing artifacts.
MASTERFULLY EXECUTED, HARD TO CLASSIFY
New Moons: The Seed Songs is described as “eco sci-fi,” but this doesn’t completely convey the scope of this hard-to-classify work. Yes, ecology and the Earth are predominant themes, but so too is spirituality — a sort of mysticism reminiscent of Native American cultures. The navigation of inner dream worlds and even a sort of magic bring the novel into the realm of some fantasy genres.
Ashmead shows an especially strong ability to create and vividly describe dream experiences and weave them into an engrossing narrative. There is an expansive feel, not only of a great odyssey, but of forces at work over vast distances of time and space. The story of how the separate pieces of the Prophecy come together is suspenseful and entertainingly intricate. Throughout the book, the author creates a sense of constant growth, discovery, learning and enlightenment as the story unfolds with ever-present magic and adventure.
The saga is slated to continue in book two of the series, as Mellinar and her posse seek spiritually to find a way to re-indigenize the troubled off-planet orphans, a storyline sure to remind us how much we ourselves all need to land back on Earth.
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The ebook of New Moons: The Seed Songs: Book One is currently discounted to 99 cents for a limited time on Amazon. Offer ends 7/4/21.
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