What do you think?
Miach & Airmed
What will the United States of America feel like at the turn of the 22nd century, when climate change and our proactive responses to it have radically changed the way that we live? What does it mean to live in a future that is decolonizing itself, in an era of healing the wounds that capitalism has left behind?
Into this time were born two siblings, from different ancestries and from different parts of the country, each becoming respected and successful healers in the state renamed the Dawn Land. As the Third Constitutional Convention approaches, Miach and Airmed are caught in a political conflict when they use their art to heal the American Prime Minister after a traumatic assassination attempt. Succeeding where conventional medicine failed, a doctor's jealousy sets to challenge their skills. Thus, the siblings find themselves at the center of a struggle between modernism and the re-enchanted world that has arisen to replace it.
Inspired by an ancient Irish myth, this is a fable of how American society might fall in love with the world again through reconnection to the Land and to our healing traditions.
Into this time were born two siblings, from different ancestries and from different parts of the country, each becoming respected and successful healers in the state renamed the Dawn Land. As the Third Constitutional Convention approaches, Miach and Airmed are caught in a political conflict when they use their art to heal the American Prime Minister after a traumatic assassination attempt. Succeeding where conventional medicine failed, a doctor's jealousy sets to challenge their skills. Thus, the siblings find themselves at the center of a struggle between modernism and the re-enchanted world that has arisen to replace it.
Inspired by an ancient Irish myth, this is a fable of how American society might fall in love with the world again through reconnection to the Land and to our healing traditions.
262 pages, Paperback
Published November 1, 2018
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
January 8, 2020
This is a deep & creative rewrite of an Irish myth with inspiring, rematriating, ecotopian vision so needed in today's world. While grounded in Abenaki territory with healing world values guiding the story, this book offers an engaging read that stimulates the imagination, reminds us of possibilities, facilitates many levels of analysis, and encourages active awareness.
January 15, 2019
Read this book if you are, or want to be a time traveler. Read this book if you are dispirited, but remain curious about the future. Read this book if you don’t want to slog through the day to day decisions, choices, news briefs and tweets of our world in flux. Don’t worry, you’ll have a map - a holographic one that tells you where you are, and how you got here. The author has jumped through time, and landed us squarely in a moment beyond now. The inevitable disorientation of opening your eyes in a different time/place is mitigated by a map that you carry along with you between the covers of this book.
Miach & Airmed takes us to a Vermont beyond 2020, far enough beyond for capitalism to have burnt itself out, and for healing to have blossomed into a holistic art. The people and the land have begun to knit themselves back together. Miach & Airmed is a hologram made by the interference of light beams. Light beams that tell different stories. One is about two siblings coming of age, another is a primer on the policies and cultural biases of our modern Industrialized society and what has replaced them. Another is the living heart of a world re-enchanted by the evolution of human consciousness reunited with its land, its ancestors, its music.
You may be tempted to put this book down after the first few chapters, especially if you prefer your imagination to be unencumbered by reality. But there is power in carrying the truths of who we are along with us as we transform. Change happens when we touch our truths. Our past is our legacy, and one that we carry with us with each step, with each choice and decision we make. We carry it in our very blood and bones, and when change happens in our blood and bones, it is magic.
Miach & Airmed takes us to a Vermont beyond 2020, far enough beyond for capitalism to have burnt itself out, and for healing to have blossomed into a holistic art. The people and the land have begun to knit themselves back together. Miach & Airmed is a hologram made by the interference of light beams. Light beams that tell different stories. One is about two siblings coming of age, another is a primer on the policies and cultural biases of our modern Industrialized society and what has replaced them. Another is the living heart of a world re-enchanted by the evolution of human consciousness reunited with its land, its ancestors, its music.
You may be tempted to put this book down after the first few chapters, especially if you prefer your imagination to be unencumbered by reality. But there is power in carrying the truths of who we are along with us as we transform. Change happens when we touch our truths. Our past is our legacy, and one that we carry with us with each step, with each choice and decision we make. We carry it in our very blood and bones, and when change happens in our blood and bones, it is magic.
February 14, 2020
Enjoyable and illuminating. This book gives me hope!
Reading this (and listening, as it comes with a soundtrack to set the stage for different scenes, which I loved) was one of those immersive experiences that comes along once in a blue moon. It takes place in the future, with footnotes about things that "happened" before the story begins, but have not happened yet in real life, in a way that lifted some of the heaviness of our current environmental disaster-state, and replaced it with ideas and feelings of hopefulness. Seeing a positive future written about so clearly is exactly the kind of setting that leaves you feeling empowered and creative. Besides being unique and inspiring, it's damn good read! If you want to be transported into another time and way of experiencing the world, to reclaim some of the magic that is inherent in nature, look no further.
Reading this (and listening, as it comes with a soundtrack to set the stage for different scenes, which I loved) was one of those immersive experiences that comes along once in a blue moon. It takes place in the future, with footnotes about things that "happened" before the story begins, but have not happened yet in real life, in a way that lifted some of the heaviness of our current environmental disaster-state, and replaced it with ideas and feelings of hopefulness. Seeing a positive future written about so clearly is exactly the kind of setting that leaves you feeling empowered and creative. Besides being unique and inspiring, it's damn good read! If you want to be transported into another time and way of experiencing the world, to reclaim some of the magic that is inherent in nature, look no further.
May 6, 2019
I just finished reading this engaging and thought-provoking book from M.Z. O'Coill, and am glad that I did. The book is set in a post-capitalist, de-industrialized Vermont (renamed Dawn Land in reference to the indigenous Abenaki name for the area), where folks are learning to live in cooperative, land-based communities and are actively working on decolonization. That's not to say that it is a utopia - there is still climate chaos, political violence, greed and hubris at play in this futurescape, but the vision it offers is hopeful and activating, inspiring us to move towards our hopes for the future, rather than fleeing from our fears.
There is clearly much research and skill that has gone into this book - both in regards to the Irish mythology, healing philosophy, and ancestral magical traditions that are so important to the story, as well as to the political and economic landscape of a post-capitalist, post-fossil fuel world. O'Coill has projected an entire future history onto the Dawn Land and the United States, an impressive feat.
At times, the narrative reads more like a manifesto than a standard plot and character driven story, which may deter some readers who are less interested in the philosophies of holistic healing and other subjects clearly dear to the author's heart. However, the last third of the book picks up into an engaging, page-flipping climax well-worth the build up.
This book will sit with me for some time as a hopeful vision of what the world could be if we continue to listen to the voices of the Land and the ancestors and fight against the industrialized genocide of our beautiful, living planet.
There is clearly much research and skill that has gone into this book - both in regards to the Irish mythology, healing philosophy, and ancestral magical traditions that are so important to the story, as well as to the political and economic landscape of a post-capitalist, post-fossil fuel world. O'Coill has projected an entire future history onto the Dawn Land and the United States, an impressive feat.
At times, the narrative reads more like a manifesto than a standard plot and character driven story, which may deter some readers who are less interested in the philosophies of holistic healing and other subjects clearly dear to the author's heart. However, the last third of the book picks up into an engaging, page-flipping climax well-worth the build up.
This book will sit with me for some time as a hopeful vision of what the world could be if we continue to listen to the voices of the Land and the ancestors and fight against the industrialized genocide of our beautiful, living planet.
February 28, 2019
I was spellbound reading Miach & Airmed which surprised me because I don't usually get swept up by books that feel like they have an explicit message or an agenda. So, yes, this book is unabashedly political, but it is so deeply thoughtful, so well researched, so darn well written and so compelling in its vision that I couldn't put it down. There is also the added bonus that O'Coill's vision is one of hope that the direction which we are hurtling in will bring us to such a crisis of conscience that the world will be better for the ecological/economic/social/spiritual armegeddon ahead. If you could use a dose of ancient wisdom infused with a very forward thinking sense of possibility as an antidote to these depressing times, let yourself dwell in the Dawn Land with Miach and Airmed; the visit will soothe your soul.
January 18, 2019
This is one of the best books I have ever read. It offers a very refreshing (and much needed, in my opinion) alternative to the dystopian future books out there currently. Mixing folklore, myth, and ancient healing traditions, the author weaves a deeply imaginative, creative and thoughtful story that will no doubt inspire the reader to forge a powerful future that reconnects us to the Land and our ancestors. Thank you so much for this book as it has deep relevance to the times we are in and courageously confronts some of the biggest challenges in our society today.
October 14, 2019
This is a fabulous work. It's a gripping page-turner that beckons you to lose yourself in it, and leaves you feeling uplifted and more alive at the end of it. But more, O'Coill begins the book with a heartfelt direct appeal to the reader, explaining their motivations for writing and revealing some of the book's political goals. This introduction is an insightful work of philosophy in itself, and deepens the reading experience considerably. I recommend this book wholeheartedly!
January 18, 2019
This is a book I will read over and over again. It is inspiring, fun, challenging, and sad all at once. Read if you are a lover of plants, lore, music, poetry, or if you are curious to be awakened to one of the many possibilities dreamed up for the future of humanity. I look forward to revisiting this book and sharing it with my loved ones.
December 9, 2019
This book is inspirational, as it illustrates a beautiful future for humans in a post-fossil fuel, reparation-making society. In addition to being an enjoyable novel for anyone to read, it could be used in the classroom for all sorts of environmental study students.
May 7, 2020
Very intriguing and inspiring take on an Irish myth, envisioning a very different future from current state. My only criticism is at times I found the endless footnotes a distraction, and I would have liked a bit more background in the beginning.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews