Joey Madia, New Mystics Reviews

  (4 Horsemen Publications, 2024). ISBN: 979-8-8232-0432-3 In August of 2022, I was asked to review Eric N. Lard’s Dawn of the Construct , which uses narratives in a trio of timelines to give us a fantasy/sci-fi hybrid that evokes Tolkien, Dungeons and Dragons, and George R.R. Martin. Drawing its three heroes together over time and space, it also reminded me of Stephen King’s second book in the high-fantasy/sci-fi series The Dark Tower : The Drawing of the Three . Another innovative element that struck me in Dawn of the Construct is that all of the heroes were struggling with doubt. Lard continues this theme in Arcfire of Antiquity with Captain Cadian Galas. Arcfire of Antiquity begins a different series, which resides predominantly in the sci-fi genre, although elements of fantasy are also threaded through. Cadian Galas, who reminds me a little of Ripley in Aliens , has lost everything precious in her life—her family and hometown (as we watch unfold in the prologue, or Ch...

  (Glannant Ty Publishing, 2016). ISBN: 978-1539080763 A few months ago, I reviewed Solaris Blueraven’s Alien Intelligence . Although One Million Miles ‘till Midnight uses much of the same subject matter (the abuse of technology to create a Matrix-like false reality on Earth and unlocking our true nature as cosmic beings), Alien Intelligence was Blueraven’s nonfiction account of what she experienced at the hands of operators of “synthetic telepathy” and artificial intelligence. In her words, it is “a reflection and parallel of an event I was inducted into in 2004 involving exotic technology and artificial intelligence” (from the Foreword). Blueraven’s story is provocative, as well as controversial. Considering, however, the debate about secret-society symbolism in pop culture (especially music); that, through Operation Paperclip, the US State Department brought Nazi scientists to America after World War II; and the existence of nefarious government-sponsored programs like MKU...

(Odyssey Books, 2021). ISBN: 978-1922311153 What a fifteen-month journey it’s been. I have detailed the sociopolitical dog and pony show and all its many components in recent reviews of books about a dystopian future, so I won’t take the space to reiterate them here. Unless you are living in a cave at the top of some mountain—which would make it impossible to read this review—you know what they are. As I wrote in those reviews, what seemed before March 2020 to be distant, to be able to be pushed away with a bit of Hope and dash of Belief that Humankind can get its act together, is closer than ever. This, in turn, means that dystopian writers—at least the talented ones—are giving us a handbook, a not-so-distant early warning, about what is almost assuredly to come. Court of the Grandchildren certainly meets these criteria. Well written, with a variety of modes of information delivery that made it an excellent candidate for a stage play (which the authors took advantage of with a vi...