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A look at some excellent self-published authors 1/26/2014 7:49:57 AM
I had the pleasure of discovering many excellent self-published authors in the past year, one of whom is Michael Brookes. His "Third Path" trilogy begins with The Cult of Me, a novel about supernatural forces at work in our world. Here is my review. The Cult of Me is the story of an unnamed, and not particularly likable, protagonist who has enormous mental powers that allow him to enter into people's minds, manipulate them and even kill them. For the first part of the book he is a pure sociopath, humiliating and then killing anyone unlucky enough to cross his path, just for the entertainment value. His only goal is to go out in a loud, bloody mess that will make him notorious for all time. Frankly, I had to wonder if the only point of this book would be to watch him wallow in the exercise of his sadistic powers. But, half-way through, the reader is thrown a serious twist. This totally despicable man is, despite his total disinterest in the matter, humanity's only hope to prevent the impending apocalypse. Without giving away too much of the plot, it seems Lazarus, from the Bible, is still alive and none too pleased about having been robbed of his just, eternal reward. But how will our "hero" kill a man who cannot die? And, since he is no lover of humanity, why would he even do it? The answers to these questions come out in the fast-moving second half of the book, which ends with the promise of more to come in the sequel, Conversations in the Abyss. Combining scenes of action and extreme violence, with philosophical discussions and religious revisionism, Brookes manages to keep the reader turning the pages, never sure what's going to happen next, in this very entertaining book. One quibble, that a few other reviewers mentioned, was the book's crying need for a good proof reader. Maybe something the author should consider.
This review first appeared on Amazon.com, at http://www.amazon.com/The-Cult-Me-Third-Path-ebook/product-reviews/B008O7ZVXW/ref=cm_cr_pr_btm_link_next_2?ie=UTF8&pageNumber=2&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending
