Druid’s Portal
Cindy Tomamichel
Historical Fantasy/Time Travel
A portal closed for 2,000 years.
An ancient religion twisted by modern greed.
A love that crosses the centuries.
An ancient druid pendant shows archaeologist Janet visions of Roman soldier Trajan. The visions are of danger, death, and love—but are they a promise or a curse?Â
Her fiancé Daman abandons her before the wedding, her beloved museum is ransacked, and a robed man vanishes before her eyes. Haunted by visions of a time she knows long gone, Janet teeters on the edge of a breakdown.
In the shadow of Hadrian’s Wall and 2,000 years back in time, Janet’s past and present collide. Daman has vowed to drive the invaders from the shores of Britain and march his barbarian hordes to Rome. Trajan swears vengeance against the man who threatens both his loves—Janet and the Empire.
Time is running out—for everyone.
Uncaged Review: The book opens with a man in robes entering the museum as Hugh, the local constable and Janet, an archeologist and museum curator watch. They follow him and watch as he opens a casket from a case and takes what it contains as a dark cloud with sparkles begins to envelop him while beasts are snapping with slavering jaws behind him. Janet grabs the chain the man is holding only to have it break off at the darkness as the man disappears.
Neither Janet nor Hugh understand what happened. All Janet knew was the man was taking more things from the museum, putting it closer to being shuttered. The man had the key to the museum, so it had to be someone they knew.
Janet examines the gold pendant she rescued from the robed man. It had a stylized tree on it with dots and symbols indicating it was in the old language of Ogham of the druids. She begins to have weird visions as she holds the pendant where she is at Hadrian’s wall, only it is fresh and new looking instead of in pieces. She feels danger, hatred, death, and love as she is pulled to a battlefield where she see only shadows before returning to the museum. She tells Hugh she is fine, not wanting to tell him about what she saw.
She hides the episodes as they continue, each one more explicit than the last as she watches the battle unfold until only one person is left standing. She learns the man she saw fighting was commander Tajan Aurelius, the cousin of Marcus Aurelius. Janet wants to help him, but stays in her time to learn as much as she could about the time period in the area while trying to find the man in the robe. She wishes her ex-boyfriend, Daman was there to translate the Ogham which seems to connect the pendant to Roman times and the Druids. It was his area of expertise.
When she does go to the time period where the Romans and Celts are warring, she ends up landing atop of Tajan on a sacrificial slab. She plays like she is a Goddess and is upset with the Celts who end up running away. She rescues Tajan and they run back to the Wall and safety even though Tajan has multiple wounds from the battle he had fought.
Janet finds a job at the bathhouse and meets Tajan again. She offers to work with him to find a Druid the locals are calling ‘the stealer of souls’. As I’m sure you have guessed by now, Daman is the man in the robes and is the chief Druid and the stealer of souls. He is using modern technology to make the Celts afraid of him and to keep his supporter with him.
I’ll not give a spoiler here, other than to say the real Druids end up helping Janet and Tajan and give her the secret to the pendant.
When I started to read this book, my first thought was it was another time shifter novel to slog through. Only I didn’t slog through it. The book had several twists and turns even though it was somewhat predictable. The author kept you wondering what was going to happen next and how they were going to catch Daman who believed Tajan was going to die and he would be able to sacrifice Janet to Bridgette, the God he believes will save him and become all powerful and control the known world.
I loved the use of the wall and the Romans since that is a historical period in Scotland I enjoyed studying. The descriptions of the Roman fort were within the time period along with the dress of the Celts and Romans. I could almost feel like I was there with the realistic visuals the author wrote.
I highly recommend this if you like any form of time travel books. It is different enough to keep you turning the pages to see what is going to happen. This book gets five stars from me for the enjoyment I had while reading and not wanting it to end as I followed Janet and Tajan, hoping Daman got his just dues. Reviewed by Barbara
5 Stars
