Aisling by Carole Cummings is one of the books I picked up off of my Amazon recommendations list. I’ve found a bunch of good books like this and I’ve found a bunch of meh books like this.  This one was more on the meh side I feel. This had potential but I felt like she started in the middle of a story and it just suddenly ended. Apparently she intended to make at least three of these Aisling books but it just. Stopped. It didn’t come to any sort of satisfactory conclusion. Just one character coming to an epiphany and going “oh shit”. It sort of did a Sopranos on us.

I felt like Cummings had this whole world planned out in her head. And it is an interesting world. She just didn’t do enough exposition to introduce use to this world. She just started talking as if we should all know what was happening and who was who. Perhaps there was a book in this world before this one that I’m unfamiliar with. Still, normally when a book is a second or later in the series, the writer will do a little recap at some point, which didn’t happen here.

Aisling is about a young oracle type man who is on the run from what he sees as a terrible destiny. He’s been lied to and abused since he was a child and all he wants to be is himself. He has no name but he steals someone’s identity papers and calls himself Wilfred Calder or Wil. His running eventually gets him in contact with a constable named Brayden Dallin who is, apparently, a part of his destiny.

So off runs Wil at haste to a little podunk town where the people chasing him finally catch up. They’re hell bent on killing him…but no one ever explains why. It’s some sort of religious zealotry but Cummings doesn’t give much detail at all on why these guys want to kill Wil. So Wil is a sympathetic character to a point but you still kind of want to smack him around when he’s being an arse and you’re not sitting there going “Oh no! Don’t kill Wil!”. It’s more of a “Huh, I wonder what that’s all about?” feeling.

So it was interesting. To a point. But I doubt I’ll be getting the other two. I think I’d have to be really desperate to pick up the next two books. So final Rating: C/C-. Maybe its because it was pretty much straight fantasy and not urban fantasy but I just could not get behind the characters at all.