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A TALE OF TRANSITION | ||
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The Tale operates on a variety of levels, and is therefore hard to sum up in a sentence, but here goes: it's a warped thriller with supernatural elements. The supernatural element of the book comes from Kurt's ideas relating to the after-life. He proposes that after death, the soul transfers to another plane of existence, where it looks back over the life just passed, and that life in the context of every other life it has led, before transferring back to life on Earth. The purpose of this cycle of birth, death and rebirth is to enable us to strike a perfect balance of human experience. Over the course of thousands of years we must intimately come to know both happiness and grief, riches and poverty, health and disease. We must have been both violent and pacifist, murderer and victim. | |
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Once we achieve this balance, we are free of the Cycle. This is why there is so much mindless violence in the world, why there are those who seem to lack basic human kindness and decency. Although they do not know it, these individuals are victims of their own decision in Transition to lead a life that will enable them to chalk up negative experiences, and so redress the sum positive balance of their lives to date. Likewise the saintly few we all regard with wonder. They may well be trying to make up for excessively violent behaviour in a previous incarnation. Against this backdrop, the Tale follows the progress of several characters over the course of nineteen years as they unknowingly play their parts in a dastardly plan drafted by the Hero, Ulysses. Heroes are a by-product of the Transition process, free of the Cycle but never to be fully free of the parallel universe they inhabit, and from which they affect our lives. Ulysses is particularly devious, and has been assigned the task of psychologically destroying a man the Heroes think should have joined them long ago. The Tale breaks down into four parts. Parts One and Two introduce the main characters and give the reader an insight into Ulysses and his plan. Parts Three and Four see the plan develop as intended by Ulysses, although the conclusion it reaches is far from foregone. Follow the link to the left to read the first few pages of A Tale of Transition Parts One and Two on lulu.com. You can buy it from the Lulu site as well. | ||
