Going back in time

So, I'm a few days late writing this, but it's been a rough week.

As I mentioned last time, The 6 Messiahs was a sequel volume. As it happened, I found out I owned the previous volume, The List of 7 by Mark Frost already, but only after ordering a used copy. Anyway, I finished this Friday afternoon, so here we go.

We start with a pre-Sherlock Holmes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle trying to get various stories published that have naught to do with his detective, as he isn't excited about being a doctor. He also seems to be a lapsed Catholic, more interested in examining the nascent Spiritualist and Theosophy movements than surgery. We open on his invitation to a seance, invited by a landed noble to prevent something catastrophic. The seance goes to hell pretty quickly, and Doyle is good to escape with his life intact, rescued by Jack Sparks, an agent of Queen Victoria, who's trying to figure out who is behind a recent spate of supernatural occurrences in the country.

We travel the English countryside, meeting such luminaries of Madame Blatlavsky and Dion Fortune; Queen Victoria herself at one point. We find out some of the criminal element is getting Zombiefied through Haitian drugs and vicious surgery. And we find out that Jack's brother is the mastermind behind this.

It's quite thrilling until about the last chapter, when after a very big lead up, we, along with Doyle hear about the conclusion through a third party.

Other than that horrible ending, it's a fun read, with a few really funny moments, such as Doyle throwing a very heavy book at a zombie pursuer, only to find out the volume was none other than HPB's Psychic Self Defense. Fun read. Just don't expect to be impressed by the ending.

Ecumenical Silliness

Mark Frost's The Six Messiahs has been an interesting beast to solve, what with figuring out partway through that it's a follow up, ordering the first book, then realizing I already own the first book.Which will make reading through that volume more interesting, since some of the major characters here have a history there.

Anyway, we open on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his brother Innes getting ready to board a ship for America for tour to celebrate Doyle's most famous creation, who had recently been revealed to have gone flying off a cliff with his archnemesis Moriarty. Mind you, people in both England and the US spend most of the book asking Doyle how Sherlock survived the fall, since no one can believe he died.

As the ship sails, we get glimpses of other characters, some of whom are already state side, like Walks Alone, the Dakota assassin; Rev A. Glorious Day, who's busy building a utopia west of Flagstaff; Jacob, the Chicago Orthodox rabbi and kabbalah headed to Arizona; Kanazuchi, a Japanese man hiding among the Chinese with a quest of his own.

On the way over, Doyle meets Lionel, Jacob's nephew; and in New York, Presto, a Indian man with a quest of his own. As the book continues, we find that most of the characters are seeking stolen holy books, most of which have been stolen by a German man, who a few decades later would have been an Aryan ideal.We also connect with Jack, who Doyle knew ten years prior, and whom served as the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, it would seem, including falling off a cliff while killing his evil brother. Most of the characters have been having dreams of tunnels under the sand, and standing with five others to do...something. None of them particularly remember the dream well enough to figure that part out.

It becomes a very merry chase through New York City to Chicago, then west to Phoenix and eventually The New City as we finally find the destiny of the Six Messiahs (from a Jewish concept that the Messiah is less a single person destined to throw off oppression and more a handful of people throughout time who hold the world on their shoulders) and the redemption of some while others fall.

I really enjoyed the book, although frankly, the ending is quite abrupt. We get several big revelations, followed by wrapping up 400+ pages of ecumenical mysticism with about 2 pages of doing the thing and finishing the story, which leaves several dangling plot threads. It would have benefitted from a bit of expansion here.