Joey Madia, New Mystics Reviews

 (Next Chapter 2021). ASIN: B08VH2Z8GK This is the third book I have reviewed from architect and author Pete Adams. The first two were Dead No More (Rhubarb Papers Book 1) in 2021 and Rite Judgement (DaDa Detective Agency Book 2) in 2022. Although all three books are situated in different series, they are united in a single, whimsical world (the 14-book Hegemon Chronicles, of which 11 are written) where multinational corporations, British police and intelligence agencies, and religious organizations come to brilliant life in Adams’s surrealist, socially conscious, quick-witted world. If you are interested in comparisons, Robert Anton Wilson, James Joyce, William S. Burroughs, and Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum and Baudolino immediately come to mind.  Like the authors mentioned above, Adams’s intelligence and facility with history, society, culture, politics, and economics are readily apparent, as is the transdisciplinary nature of his themes. For instance, Rite Judgement ha...

  (Serene Publications, 2016). ISBN: 978-0-9949968-0-0 As a lifelong creative and professional storyteller, I have very fond memories of a whole host of animated, narrated stories that kept me enrapt as a child. There is Sebastian Cabot and the adventures of Winnie the Pooh and friends, the Rankin and Bass Christmas specials (with narrators like Fred Astaire and Burl Ives), the animated Tolkien adaptations, The Secret of NIMH , and my favorite, The Flight of Dragons . Their pacing, color palette, themes, music, tensions, and A-list voice talent all worked together to transport, educate, challenge, and comfort me. Perhaps most importantly, they inspired me to do the work to which I have devoted my life. Carole Elaine Borgens’s The Curious Adventures of Flossie the Cat , from its opening illustrations (by Ros Webb Design) and very first enticing words (“… And thus began the journey”), immediately brought me back to those days of my childhood and early teenage years. The Curious A...