Mormonism as a religion has always interested me. Not in an "I want to be Mormon!" kind of way, but in a "how did Joseph Smith get people to follow him?!?" kind of way. I read John Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven, which did a lot to help me understand the history and theology of Mormonism (and is an excellent book, if you too are interested in learning about religions). Along with that, I've read both fiction and non-fiction about the phenomenon of plural wives; the practice of men taking more than one wife. While the practice is officially banned in mainstream Mormonism, there have been stories in the last decade or so of offshoot cults of Mormonism who still engage in the practice. Aside from the obvious sexism present in the idea of plural marriage, many of those cults are also marrying girls as young as 10 or 11 to much older men, and driving their boys away from the community when they begin to be a threat to the older men's ability to attach themselves to new wives. This has resulted in some high profile raids and arrests.

fascinating history

Claire Avery explores one such cult in her novel Hidden Wives. Rachel and Sara are sisters, living in a fundamentalist Mormon community. Both are in their mid-teens, which actually makes them old maids by the communities standards. Sara has been promised to her uncle, and will be his fifth wife. Distraught, she begins to questions everything about their faith and way of life.  Beautiful Rachel, on the other hand, has caught the attention of the most powerful men in the community. She will be given the "honor" of marrying one of these men, all of whom are older than Rachel's own parents.

Sara begins to think she must find a way to escape, but she is not willing to leave her sister to her fate. Rachel, for her part, continues to cling to the tenants of their faith, stubbornly refusing to admit to herself or anyone else that maybe what they've been taught is not the literal truth about God's plan. But when she develops feelings for Luke, a young newcomer to their group who was forced to come by his parents, she decides that her love for him is stronger than her feelings of duty and guilt about the cult. Finally, Sara knows they have their chance to run.

While Avery does not specifically name the cult as a perverted form of Mormonism (it's called the Blood of the Lamb in the book), the community is clearly based on the Mormon offshoots that have been in the news in the last decade or so. Sara's character is the one I related to the most. She's smart and feisty, torn between her love for her family and her growing concerns about the faith community in which she was raised. Rachel's character was hard for me to like. She was almost cartoonishly naive about the world, and for most of the book appeared to have very little ability to think for herself about much of anything. I understand that was the point; she was so brainwashed by the religious instruction she'd been given that she couldn't imagine or admit that it might be wrong. But her dogged adherence to the tenants of the cult became tiresome after a while. Luke, as a boy dragged along to the community by her newly-converted parents, became the bridge between the girls and their new world, and the love between him and Rachel was pretty sweet.

One of the things I appreciated about the book was the fact that after the girls ran away, everything wasn't suddenly all better for them. Avery showed how difficult it would be for young people, sheltered from modern society, to survive in the real world. The girls knew almost nothing about the world outside the community. Had Luke not come from there, they would never have been able to make their escape. They would have been forced to go back or ended up exploited on the street. The parts of the story where they were figuring out how to survive were some of the best, and it was at that point that I started to like Rachel as a character. While there were aspects of the story that were not totally realistic, there was enough there to keep me engaged, and as quick, easy reads go, it did its job.

The Egyptian, Layton Green

Last year I reviewed Layton Green's first novel,  The Summoner.  In it, Green introduces us to Dominic Grey, a former member of the US diplomatic services security.  While stationed in Zimbabwe, Grey is drawn into the mysterious disappearance of a US diplomat, and its connection to a ju-ju priest who seems to be able to do the impossible.  This year I was lucky enough to be asked to review his next book, The Egyptian.

When I reviewed Green's first book, I said that while I thought there were some pacing and exposition issues, I was excited to see where Grey's story went as the series continues.  I was not disappointed.  Green has taken Grey out of the Diplomatic Security Service-which I think allows for more flexibility in storylines over time-and has him working with Professor Viktor Radek investigating cults and mysterious, seemingly magical events around the globe.  In The Egyptian, Radek and Grey are called in by a biomedical company to recover stolen research into a life extension product that could literally make humans almost immortal.  But all is not what it seems-when Grey and an investigative reporter begin to uncover the location of the stolen research, they witness the slaughter of a team of scientists, which leads them to believe that the biotech company is somehow behind the violence.  Drawn by their investigation to Egypt, they discover an ancient cult intent on controlling who is bestowed eternal life.

One of my favorite phrases for someone who seems to be feeling at the top of their game is "in the pocket".  Green has found his groove with this series, and The Egyptian felt much more "in the pocket" that The Summoner.  While there is less about Grey's back story in this book, there is enough to keep you interested in him as a character.  The story moves from America to Europe to a lost oasis in the Sahara, making for a lot of globe-trotting action.  The information about the immortality cult, and the science behind anti-aging, was presented in such a way that I felt like I learned a lot without being lectured at, and it was well-placed in the overall arc of the story.  I am so glad that this series is shaping up the way it is...smart thrillers for people who like their action with some cognitive stimulation!

Thanks for Layton for giving me an advanced preview copy.  You can get it in Kindle or Nook version from his website, www.laytongreen.com.

The Summoner, by Layton Green

After the Da Vinci Code, there was quite a market created for historical thrillers.  Layton Green takes this now rather cliche formula and turns it on it's head, giving us a dark, gritty story of blood sacrifice and ancient evil in his book The Summoner.

Dominic Grey is a member of the Diplomatic Security Service.  He is a man with a past-abused by his father as a boy, he ran away from home at 16 and has spent his adult life traveling the world, learning jiu-jitsu and taking a number of dangerous jobs.  He is called in to investigate after a US diplomat disappears during a religious ceremony in the bush.  Along with his minder, Nya Mushumbu, they investigate, only to find that there appear to be magical forces at work.  Viktor Radek, a religious phenomenologist and expert on cults is brought in to help them understand the forces that they are dealing with.  Thwarted at every turn by the political and bureaucratic nightmare that is modern-day Zimbabwe, Grey and Nya soon find themselves working outside of the law-and facing an enemy who seems to have supernatural powers.

When I was approached to review this book, I was very intrigued by the premise.  It seemed to take the historical thriller genre in another direction, focusing on ancient religions and some of their more sensational practices and placing them in the 21st century.  The resulting conflict between modern man's rational thought and ancient "supernatural" occurrences becomes a central feature of the mystery.  The mystery was not just what happened to the diplomat, but whether what appeared to happen could in fact be real.

As I read I could literally see this playing out as a movie in my mind, something that is not always true of the books I read.  I think that this would make an excellent movie.  It is fast-paced, has some truly gruesome scenes of ju-ju blood rituals, and characters that radiate evil rather strongly.  While I enjoyed the story quite a bit, it did have some of the same problems I see with Dan Brown's writing.  Prof. Radek spends paragraphs on exposition, which can start to feel like a history lesson.  But Layton does a better job of placing them in the action.  Radek is not hurriedly explaining the history of ju-ju as they are literally running for their lives, but during moments in between the action.  He also makes them a bit shorter, which helps the flow of the book.  Speaking of the flow, while it was well-paced, I felt that there were areas that could have used more development.  Unless you had pretty good background knowledge about Zimbabwe some of the cultural references would be troubling, and a little bit more information about the Diplomatic Security Service, how it works, etc...might have been useful.  I think all in all this is a good start to what is going to be a series of historical thrillers about Dominic Grey.  I look forward to seeing how the characters develop over time, and how Green's writing grows as he continues the series.

(Thanks to Mr. Green for providing me a review copy of the book!)