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ReReadable Books

February 2006

"Neptune: The Romance Factor and the Tower of Babel"

By

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

 

 

 To send books for review in this column email Jacqueline Lichtenberg,jl@simegen.com  for snailing instructions or send an attached RTF file.  
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Threshhold TV Series on CBS from ST:Enterprise producer Brannon Braga

The Chorillan Cycle, Azuli Eyes, Scout’s Pride, and By Fire And Stars, by Michelle L. Levigne, Awe-Struck Ebooks  http://www.awe-struck.net/   

Sins of the Night by Sherrilyn Kenyon, St. Martin’s PB, July 2005

The Challenge and The Dare, by Susan Kearney, Tor Romance PBs, Feb & July 2005

Hunter’s Moon and Moon’s Web by C. T. Adams and Cathy L Clamp, Tor Romance, Dec. 2004, Aug. 2005

Nowhere do you find a more riveting blur of the line between fantasy and reality than in romance – real world romance in your real life, and in the genre Fantasy Novel.

The 21st Century has seen the explosion of the SF/F-Romance crossover novel where romances happen in time, space, cyberspace, or on a quest for a magical object. Many Romance Writers also belong to SFWA, the professional SF writers’ organization that bestows the Nebula Award.

Astrologically, the transit of Neptune to a vital point in a person’s natal chart marks a romance, a love affair, even marriage – or religious conversion.

Keeping in mind that some of the finest engineers have a Pisces sun (ruled by Neptune), and that imagination (Neptune) is the key to doing original science, consider that Pisces is the natural 12th House (matters of ultimate concern). Pisces produces priests and scientists. In other words, Neptune connects science and spirituality into a seamless whole without any contradictions.

Don’t forget the Newsweek cover story of Sept. 5, 2005, Spirituality In America that we’ve been discussing for months now which shows that Americans are on a quest for direct, personal experience of God.

Meanwhile sales of Romance novels soar. People may be searching for the experience of God in love. But what is the major theme of complaints in marriage? He/She doesn’t listen to me!

Even two native English speakers can’t communicate about emotions. What factor in the structure of the universe causes this?

Many people from all religions and spiritual paths have recently been turning to Kabbalah, Jewish Mysticism, the root of the Tarot, to learn how the universe is structured. One of the Biblical commentators that Kabbalists rely upon, nicknamed Rashi, ponders which sin was worse, the sin of the time of the Flood, or the Tower of Babel?

Before the Flood, people were in terrible conflict and cruel to each other, but they did not attack God. They were drowned, while the builders of the Tower of Babel, who sought to defy God but were in harmony with each other, were not destroyed but scattered to speak different languages, communication confounded utterly.

Rashi makes clear that defiance of God is not as grave a behavior problem as cruelty to other people. Building The Tower of Babel, although an act of rebellion against the Divine, was an expression of cooperation, camaraderie and friendship. Due to their unity, says Rashi, they were not destroyed.

So Kaballisticly, the one behavior that most seriously blocks our individual and group minds from contact with the divine is our conflict with each other – our lack of love for each other – our not listening to each other. Because of The Tower (symbolized by a Tarot Card) it takes us great effort to listen, even to our own subconscious minds.

The Group Mind of all humanity remembers a time of harmony, easy communication, and unity of purpose, a glorious time. Subconsciously, we are all driven to make that kind of contact with at least one other person – for without that intimate contact, that deep personal and emotional validation, we can’t even begin our spiritual quest for contact with God.

And so vast numbers of readers with a diversity of tastes are craving TV, film and novels about how to achieve communication across unimaginable gulfs. The most common such gulf is that between male and female.

The SF/F-Romance mixtures feature unique ways of opening those intimate communications channels and thus experiencing the Divine (Lovers Card).

Most prominent this year is the new CBS show, Threshold where aliens from an alternate reality with more dimensions than ours send a probe to Earth that emits a sound which causes genetic mutation apparently to transform Earth for their use. The producers have created an unimaginable gulf – will they communicate across it?

Michelle L. Levigne stole a march on CBS’s Threshold, though. In 2004, Awe-Struck Ebooks, one of the foremost Ebook publishers, released Levigne’s Chorillan Cycle, with 3 long, satisfying novels Azuli Eyes, Scout’s Pride, and By Fire And Stars. They should be mass market!

In a farflung interstellar civilization, humanity colonizes a world where the native life begins to transform people genetically, starting with the children. At puberty, they run wild into the forests and commune with the nature of the planet, developing a range of distinctive talents, abilities and attitudes.

The colonists see this as an epidemic that must be stopped. The victims have a different take on the matter. One young woman whose friend has run off into the forest is taken offworld by her father to prevent her transformation. Upon return, she uncovers more, deep and far ranging consequences of this strange genetic effect.

In these novels, as in Threshold, the lines between human and non-human are blurred (Neptune), creating a communication gulf, a rift as deep as the subconscious. Levigne explores the role of love and intimacy in bridging the Tower of Babel sized gulf.

Sherrilyn Kenyon has created a not-quite-vampire fantasy world in her famous Dark-Hunter universe. Grafted onto our mundane reality her universe extends into a non-material realm where the Ancient Greek gods still vie for supremacy. Sins of the Night tells the story of such a Dark-Hunter turned Executioner who is sent to clean up a situation and instead falls in love with the one he ought to kill.

Kenyon has invented an odd definition of soul worth thinking about, which creates some twists to this story, but love finds a way to bind even these souls. All Kenyon’s novels are page-turners! The Dark Hunter novels are worth their cover price because of the twists on the concept of soul.

Susan Kearney has created a unique new galaxy spanning society with time-travel, a woman snatched from our own time to an era with an intriguing space drive and even more riveting sex-drive.

In The Challenge and its direct sequel, The Dare, both Tor Romances, Kearney tells the story of this modern woman snatched from our time and told she must submit sexually in order to open her psychic abilities so she can save a galaxy. Here is the story of an exemplary hero, and an artificial intelligence spawned within a complex computer network who envies this modern woman’s plight.

In The Dare, the AI falls in such passionate love that she dares to become flesh and blood. Complicating her love though is the immanent collapse of a galactic sentinel system that has run for millennia, forgotten and ignored, which must now be repaired by the modern woman. Kearney’s work is characterized by tight plotting, almost believable SF, excellent fantasy, and insightful psychology.

Tor, the publisher of great SF and Fantasy, has launched this new Romance line with many strong novels featuring SF which is distinctively improved over the usual Romance publisher’s SF-Romance. But Tor also does top grade fantasy and now the Tor Romance line is giving us some dynamite Fantasy-Romance.

Also from Tor Romance, C. T Adams and Cathy Clamp have produced a werewolf series I wish I’d had read as a teenager! Hunter’s Moon and it’s immediate sequel, Moon’s Web are top drawer urban fantasy novels of shapechangers living among us. Both novels use a tight, single point of view that is my hallmark of great writing. Cathy tells me there will be more in this "Sazi" universe – Captive Moon in August 2006, another in December 2006, and in 2007 another from Tony’s point of view.

Here in these two novels, Tony, a human man turned werewolf via a female werewolf’s bite, tells his story in first person. He was a Mob Assassin paid to kill the werewolf, but she killed him instead – accidentally leaving him to revive as a werewolf. In Hunter’s Moon, a woman tries to hire him to kill her because she doesn’t think she can suicide without botching the job. She is depressed because she has no relationships that matter. They fall in love – and bond mentally, opening deep communication and becoming mates.

In Moon’s Web, Tony makes the acquaintance of the were-animal society hidden under our ordinary reality. There are not just werewolves, but many other sorts of were-animals. He accepts a commission to find and rescue a missing werewolf, the woman who turned him. Meanwhile, he discovers that his bond to his human mate ignites his psychic powers – which quickly elevates him above the Omega or under-dog status in the pack.

To send books for review in this column email Jacqueline Lichtenberg,  jl@simegen.com for snailing instructions or send an attached RTF file.  

 

 

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