Kirkus Reviews Review of Light by Paul Dale Anderson

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.

 --Kirkus Reviews

 

Light is available September 11, 2015

Tomorrow, September 11, 2015, is the official publication and release date of Light, my latest novel. Light is a supernatural thriller, a dark fantasy. It’s available as a trade paperback for $19.95 and as a Kindle e-book for $3.99. You can order the trade paperback here http://www.amazon.com/Light-Winds-Paul-Dale-Anderson/dp/0937491152/ or the Kindle version here http://www.amazon.com/Light-Winds-Book-Paul-Anderson-ebook/dp/B014Q8EJJE/

Many of my novels have ensemble casts of characters. I group the twenty-some novels of the Instruments of Death series together because Carl Erickson, Tom Wesley, Troy Nolan, Andy Sinnott, Sally Brightson Nolan, Marsha Wade, Danny Wesley, Rat, George, Connie Kelly, Linda Davis, and a host of others are recurring characters. Both author and reader know and love those characters. We care about what happens to them. Our lives are intertwined.

            As I edited page proofs for Darkness and Winds, I fell in love with some of my favorite characters all over again. The Ranger is my ideal of a perfect action hero, plagued by guilt and seeking redemption for his own actions that resulted in myriad deaths over millennia. Biegolmai Daavvi and Lokesvara Sailendravarman are my ideals of supernatural forces for good. Udug Hull is the perfect mysterious stranger, part fallen-angel and part demon, who is bound by unbreakable laws established by the elder gods. He has little sympathy for the foibles of humanity for he has never been human.

            I first introduced Lokesvara and the Ranger in Abandoned, and Lokesvara also makes important appearances in Winds, Darkness, Light, Time, and Mysterious Ways. He is a driving force for good who usually acts behind the scenes. Yet Lokesvara Sailendravarman, too, is a fierce warrior. He is one of the Eight Great Bodhisattvas.

            Biegolmai is a shaman, part of an ancient tradition that heralds back to the beginning of time. What ties many of my characters together is that they are all wounded warriors who have made horrible mistakes in the past and often suffered and died because of their actions. It is said by shamans that before the physician can heal others, he must first heal himself. Karmic burden can be a real bitch. In Darnkness, the bitch’s lapdogs are the Erinyes, the daughters of Nyx. Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone are also recurring characters in my Winds series which marries shamanic tradition with traditional mythologies from the north, east, west, and south.

            This is the kind of epic fantasy I love to read and write. I hope you like Winds and Darkness as much as I do.

 

     

Bah! Humbug!

I hate winter.

As each day gets shorter and nights get longer and increasingly colder, people around me die. That, dear reader, is a fact.

It seems like all my good friends and close family members chose to die between November 1^st and March 1^st: President Kennedy in November; my mother and my wife in January; my father, my nephew, my aunts and uncles in December; Rocky Wood and Chellis French last week; just the night before last there was a fatal automobile crash directly in front of my house that distracted me from writing with dozens of red and blue flashing lights and wailing sirens; Elizabeth got a phone call yesterday that the pastor of her church passed away; and early this morning I was awakened by more sirens because the old guy across the street kicked the bucket. I was once again reminded how fragile life can be as winter steals precious time from my life and the lives of others.

 I have tried to protect myself and my house from death’s intrusion by surrounding the place with huge living trees and a berm of thick bushes. Twice in the twenty-some years I have lived here those trees and bushes intervened to save my life by stopping careening cars from crashing through the front of my house. I live on one of the busiest east-west thruways connecting the city of Rockford with Chicago, and cars daily race past my house at dangerously high rates of speed. I have witnessed automobiles crash into my big magnolia trees, and I have had my picture window punctured by bullets during drive-bys while I sat near the window writing. Not all of these things happen only in winter, of course. But it seems attempts on my life happen more frequently between the first of November and the first of March.

My thesis and dissertation advisors insistently reminded me throughout grad school that correlation does not prove causation, and I rationally realize that darkness alone does not cause death. After all, Elvis died in August, and plenty of people do die during daylight hours. But I see the grinning spectre of death hanging around my house during the darkness of winter, waiting patiently for me to emerge from my fortress. Let him wait, I say. I don’t plan to venture out into that long goodnight anytime soon.

This is the mood that infects my writing in winter. I have half a dozen short stories currently in progress, plus three new novels. All focus on death and dying. Come spring, my writing will focus on rebirth. Writers cannot help but be affected by their environment, and that includes weather and diminished daylight. Several of my writer friends have found their output in winter adversely affected by bouts of illness. Other friends have mentioned debilitating depression. I empathize with them. Winter takes its inevitable toll on all of us. I hate winter with a passion.

My protagonists are survivors who battle darkness to emerge victorious from winter, and the eight protagonists of my upcoming Abandoned-series of novels are able to consciously choose when to die. They cannot escape death entirely, although some of my antagonists try. Only one of the Abandoned novels was written in winter. It’s titled Winds. It’s followed by Darkness and then by Light. The fifth novel is entitled Time.  Abandoned will be published next March by Eldritch Press. They are all stand-alone novels with some recurring characters. Each is around 120,000 words.  That’s nearly a million words devoted to the themes of death, dying, and rebirth.

In each of those novels, a primary protagonist dies. I want readers to know that death is not the end of the adventure but the beginning. Yes, dear reader, there is light at the end of the tunnel, and day always follows night.

So be of good cheer, and don’t let the darkness get to you. Celebrate the holidays and the return of the Light.