WHAT PIERS ANTHONY SAYS ABOUT SACRED ROTA

“I read Waking God II The Sacred Rota, by Brian L Doe and Philip F Harris. This is a sequel to Waking God, published in 2006, or really a continuation of a three part story. It is a science fantasy theological thriller, odd as that combination may seem to be. The final battle is developing, and while they do argue theology, there are also people getting killed wholesale as the several themes slowly integrate. I am agnostic, with no belief in the supernatural, but as before, I found portions of the discussion more interesting than the action. Here's when Lucifer harangues an Archangel: “You create demons and false hopes of redemption. You build them mighty temples and give with one hand and slaughter with the other. You have kept them separate and ignorant and give just enough to raise empty hopes. You destroy their prophets and burn their seers. If they question, you put them to the rack and crush all semblance of free thought. You give them a doctrine of poverty and offer riches in your fantasy heaven. Kill in the name of god and your treasure shall be immeasurable. You divide them and thus conquer them, and tell them they have no responsibility but to be good sheep and to follow your demented dictates.” This strikes me as an apt description of global religion. I was intrigued by the Tarot discussion, because I did some research there, thirty years ago, when writing Tarot and devising my own 100 card Animation Tarot deck, because the established decks are clearly incomplete. I conjecture that one author in this collaboration knows how to write, and the other knows his occult lore, because they clearly have done their Tarot homework. So this is a novel worth reading, but it will help to have an open mind. I fault it for developing serious characters who may then be thrown away, or suddenly having new significant characters for whom there was no prior reference. (But it turned out I had forgotten that one of those was in the prior novel. That will be clarified in the published edition of this one.) So I think it needs better overall organization, but there is nevertheless much here that you probably won't find in the tacitly expurgated traditional press.” (June 2008)