Tapestry For Love

Title: Tapestry For Love
Author: Rayne Auster
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Genre: M/M Fantasy romance
Length: 212 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

A guest review by Jenre

Summary Review
An interesting idea of fated love and some unusual world building fell a little flat due to the overblown prose and seeming lack of any real connection between the heroes.

***This review contains what could be considered spoilers***

THE BLURB

Aislinn is an immortal dream spinner, tasked with weaving tapestries to define the dreams of mortals—but he has forgotten how to dream for himself. The drudgery of his life changes when he is asked to spin a companion into mortal Keith Wilcox’s dreams. But Aislinn makes a critical mistake: he accidentally spins himself into Keith’s tapestry, making the dream unobtainable.

As his punishment Aislinn is sent to the mortal world, and he’s blinded-sided when Keith reminds him of the lover torn from him by betrayal and murder. Now Aislinn’s new life is about more than making Keith’s dream possible; it’s about rediscovering the meaning of dreaming and racing against time and death to recapture a love lost more than a millennium ago.

THE REVIEW

I picked up this book because I thought the initial premise sounded interesting. And it was. The first part of the book involving Aislinn and his role as chief dream spinner hooked me into the story as I read of his great sadness at losing his lover Kian, over 3000 years previously. In his grief he has turned to pouring himself into his dream spinner role reaching the top position. When he’s asked by the king to spin a special tapestry for a mortal, things go badly wrong when Aislinn accidentally weaves himself into the dream. His punishment is banishment to the mortal world, doomed to the cycle of life and reincarnation. For his first life, he’s allowed to keep his appearance and memories of his immortal life, and it’s as ‘Ashley’ that he begins life on Earth. Within a couple of weeks Aislinn meets Keith, the man whose tapestry was the cause of his downfall. It isn’t long before Aislinn realises that there is more to Keith’s soul than just that of an ordinary mortal.

As I said, I was drawn quickly into the story of Aislinn and his banishment to the mortal world. I enjoyed the meeting with Keith and the subsequent awkwardness that happens as a result of Aislinn realisation that Keith is the reincarnation of Kian. It was after that point that my interest in the story began to wane a little for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, I found the writing itself to be overly wordy, verbose even. This was particularly the case during dialogue when a character would speak a line, followed by a paragraph of internal musing. Then the next character would speak a line, followed by more internal dialogue. As a result, the pace of the book, especially during character discussions was incredibly slow, and I found myself impatient for the conversation to continue, to get to the point of the dialogue. This was also the case during the sex scenes where there was so much description of the thoughts of the character during sex, rather than the actions of scene, that I often found myself tempted to skip the sex altogether. I seem to remember that I had this problem with the last Rayne Auster book that I read, so I suppose this is just the author’s style. In the case of this book, though, I found the thick wordiness made the story drag, caused a barrier to my engaging fully with the plot or characters and I had to force myself to keep reading.

Secondly, I had a slight problem with the relationship between Aislinn and Keith, mostly because of Aislinn’s insistence on seeing Keith as his dead lover, Kian. This made me feel a little uncomfortable, mainly due to that fact that there is no romantic tension because Aislinn is already in love with Kian/Keith, but also because Aislinn is so blinded by the re-emergence of the soul of Kian that it felt like he loved a different person, not Keith the man, but Kian the immortal. There are several references made to how different Keith is in looks and temperament to Kian, yet it felt that Aislinn never really saw those differences, and I couldn’t really understand how you can love a soul without loving the person as well. Keith too falls in love quickly, something which wasn’t adequately explained. It seemed like one minute he was sceptical of the whole ‘soul’ business and the next he accepted it and was in love as a result. It just rang false to me and as a result I felt distanced from the romance.

Despite my couple of problems, I can see how this would be a book which would appeal to fantasy fans. There were a lot of nice touches, especially in the immortal world building and in the character of Brigid who acts as a bridge between the two worlds. I also liked the slight mystery element surrounding the death and betrayal of Kian, even if I did work out what was happening before the reveal. Ultimately though, this was just an average read for me, although I’m sure there are readers out there who wouldn’t have as much of a problem with the prose or the romance, and would enjoy this book a great deal.