TITLE INFORMATION
LIGHT
Paul Dale
Anderson
2AM Publications
(530 pp.)
$19.95 paperback
ISBN:
978-0-937491-15-7; September 11, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
The ghost of a
murdered U.S. Army Ranger plans to thwart a plot to assassinate world leaders
in Anderson’s (Pinking Shears, 2015, etc.) supernatural thriller.
Maj. Bill Ramsey
is dead, but he won’t go into the light until he completes his mission. He’d
been in Pakistan to infiltrate a secret base for training American mercenaries.
His spirit guide, Vajrapani, a bodhisattva (enlightened being) tells him how to
share a body. Ramsey enters the momentarily unprotected (and orgasmically
distracted) body of
ex-Marine Randy
Edwards, who’s already being wooed by the Worldwide Logistical Security Consultants
and Transportation Corporation. WLSCTC is gathering former military personnel
and plotting “something big,” which Ramsey hopes to stop. Fortunately, he has
plenty of people and entities to help, including Vajrapani and intelligence
analyst Deb Johnson of the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command. There’s
a lot to ponder in Anderson’s novel, which blends abstract notions (like the
astral plane) with palpable action sequences, but the author manages not to
lose the reader. When Ramsey speaks to Deb, for example, it’s perfectly clear
that he’s using Randy’s physical body. In the same vein, many characters are,
for various reasons, familiar with bodhisattvas and the spiritual realm, making
it easier for readers to accept that Deb and boyfriend Bill Porter can
spiritually traverse the astral plane and physically teleport. Reincarnation,
too, plays an essential part to the tale and explains why 12-year-old sex slave
Anong becomes an efficient ally for the good guys. The story is sometimes a
little too conceptual, like the description of spirits who’ve learned “how to
manipulate the subtle energies from which was woven the very fabric of the
universe.” But Anderson adds rousing elements such as gunfights, the suggestion
of a mole inside INSCOM, and surprising connections (i.e., Ramsey knows the man
whose body is occupied by Vajrapani). There’s also a bit of suspense; Earl
Wright is an unmistakable villain recruiting mercenaries for WLSCTC, but the
one(s) actually behind the plan for world domination may be something much more
than human—and much worse.
Renders spirits
and the preternatural realm as tangible scenes of action and intensity.
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