Blood in the Ground represents the third and final installment of the Ascension Trilogy. The trilogy should not be misconstrued as a three-part sequel. As a footnote, the books do not occur in chronological order. Each book in the trilogy stands in its own right as a complete story, which is locked into place within the larger story: the Ascension Trilogy. Notwithstanding the independence of each book, the three books are distinct pieces of the puzzle each fitting neatly together. The Ascension Trilogy is more akin to a path upon which a journey is embarked. This journey symbolically represents the spiritual trek of man. In the first book, the pilgrimage begins in the depths of darkness, representing man’s darkest day, religiously identified as the “fall of man” and progresses into book two as a type of purgatory. The attendant is prepared; the dross is skimmed from the molten man so that he may be pure in his future service. As the odyssey of the Ascension Trilogy continues into the third book, Blood in the Ground, man progresses into spiritual glory, often regarded religiously as the “Kingdom”. The three books of the Ascension Trilogy map the steps of man’s passage. It is upon this route that the Ascension Trilogy was founded, from the depths to the heights, so to speak. Blood in the Ground carries the reader to the third level of this voyage. 

Blood in the Ground exploits the convention of magical realism to a certain degree. The book should not be confused with the literary genre of magical realism, or the Neue Sachlichkeit art movement of the 1920’s, rather a borrowing of technique and style. So, call it a convention. The story acknowledges the skin-like membrane that separates the human world from the spiritual world. Just as the cells within our body are contained by a membrane, so is the world that we live in. Likewise, just as nucleotides cross neural membranes, spirits can cross the membrane that separates our world from theirs— and vice-a-versa, as Peyton Costello does in Blood in the Ground and previous Ascension Trilogy books. Peyton and Opossum are analogous to shamans who partake in ayahuasca to transcend the membrane like veil that shields the spiritual world from our own reality. When these two shamans pass forward into the spiritual world, they are endowed with great powerful weapons to do battle against each other and claim victories for their Masters. In the book Blood in the Ground, the spoils of this war are the souls in which Peyton fights for and Opossum attempts to usurp. The ultimate prize is ascension. What remains is the ravages of a great spiritual war that has been waged since time began.