Ian's first novel. The Wizard from the Isles, told the story of a powerful wizard, Robbie Taran, who was born in the Outer Isles of Scotland and whose life spanned the twentieth century. The sequel, Tribulation, found the world in the twenty-first century approaching crisis through over-population, pollution, climate change, and the changes in global political and economic hegemony. The "resolution" of that crisis was through a cataclysm that left the world forever changed, with only a tenth of its population surviving. Humanity is resolved to live rationally and avoid the problems of the past. Dark Renaissance shows how that resolve progresses - or fails to progress. Counterpointed to the surviving world population is the small settlement of Nature wizards on a rocky crag in the Southern Ocean, whose life narrative is very different: they watch and observe, and maintain the collected wisdom of the ages in the hope that some renaissance might eventually come.
Dark Renaissance is not optimistic about the future of humanity; but its observations about human reversion to primitive thinking, and its dark metaphors about Evil ingrained in human nature, may give observers of the human condition much to think about. Ian Rae is an Australian writer of entirely Scottish ancestry. Before he became a full-time writer he was an academic in the field of history, and a qualified psychotherapist and clinical hypnotherapist. He has also been a professional singer and musician, and a sculptor.