THE SEABORNE
by A G Rivett
ISLE FINCARA TRILOGY, Book 1
Hardback (ISBN 978-17393623-6-2)
E-Book (ISBN 978-17393623-8-6)
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Enter a windswept, wave-washed land where wolves still roam and the ptarmigan struts upon the moor. Arrive at Caerpadraig, tucked between the mountains, the lough and the wide, western sea. Three fishermen in a small wooden boat are hauling a shipwrecked man ashore. None of them has seen the like of his outlandish clothing.
Charged with teaching the castaway their language and their ways, the priest and his wife face a conundrum. Where has this man come from? Seemingly ignorant of the most basic skills, the task of teaching him is painstaking and slow. Can what, at length, he has to tell be true?
A tale of metamorphosis in which two worlds collide and John, a 21st century Londoner, must go back a thousand years to become the Islander, Dhion. But trouble follows the Seaborne, and when a young man dies, the people of Caerpadraig deem it best to let the ocean decide his fate.
Book 1 of A G Rivett's beautifully-written time-slip trilogy. A spiritual inquiry. And a love story.
A modern engineer in medieval times
What might it be like for a modern engineer to find himself in pre-industrial times? Standing on a cliff top on the Galway coast, A G Rivett dreamed into this question. He put pen to paper as an idea began to form, then set it aside nigh on twenty years. When he returned to it at last, his question and the place where he first asked it had merged. He saw an island to the west of Scotland, and north of Ireland – not that anyone knows those place names in the world he began to create. The Island is where present-day engineer, John Finlay, finds himself washed up after running away to sea. It’s the place where they call him the Seaborne.
Worldbuilding
Worldbuilding is key to writing convincing fantasy or alternative history. The books of the Isle Fincara Trilogy have elements of both, and Rivett builds the Island world slowly. With John, you take your first steps into a fishing village of thatched roundhouses, then cross the pass to see the township of Caerpadraig spread out beneath. And if, at first, you don’t know what ‘rondel’ and ‘shareg’ mean, you enter a little into his confusion. Again and again, you see and sense the mountains, the moors and their wild inhabitants, and the ever-encircling sea. The natural world is a constant presence, vividly evoked.
The story
John Finlay's world has fallen apart. His engineering business has failed, his relationship has failed. His flight from debts leads him to disaster – and to the Island, where he must learn to live anew. Dermot, pulling a body, barely alive, from the water, has never seen anyone so strangely dressed. His Celtic island knows nothing of debt, nor engineering. Where has this man come from? John struggles to accept that he has been carried across time and into another world. How he got there is a mystery. But John the foreigner must turn slowly into Dhion the Islander. Still, he brings with him unfinished business that must be faced, and ideas that may not always be welcome.
A tale of discovery, reassessment and transformation, in which John-Dhion must struggle to find himself and his place in this new, old, world.
The Seaborne. An adventure, a love story and a spiritual quest.
The author
A.G. Rivett claims to have lived several lives in the course of his one life. Born in London, raised in the Home Counties, he has been a doctor, a priest and a crofter in the Scottish Highlands. He has lived in rural Northern Nigeria and knows what it is like to be ‘a stranger in a strange land.’
Later, and after a period of ordained ministry in the Anglican Church, he moved to northern Scotland where he met the Céile Dé, an ancient tradition of Celtic spirituality that appealed to his deep sense of the sacredness of nature and the interdependence of feminine and masculine.
The Seaborne, his debut novel, was conceived in Ireland and written while he was living in Scotland.
He is married to Gillian Paschkes-Bell, has three daughters and two grandsons and now lives in West Wales where he cultivates a wildflower meadow.
Read a chapter
Visit the author’s website to read the Prologue and Chapter One
Visit the author's website
Reading The Seaborne with Earth, Air Fire and Water
An interpretation based on the four elements of ancient times. See the Bryn Glas Blog post.
Social Media
A. G. Rivett is on Facebook
The Isle Fincara Trilogy
Read about the complete trilogy here, or about the individual books by clicking on the book cover below.
