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Grady Harp is our favorite Top 10 Amazon Reviewer
THE SEVENTH KING is the first book to come from the mind of Njedeh Anthony and it raises as many questions as any new novel in a while.
A strange mixture of Western and Eastern religion, based on a verse from the book of Revelations in the Bible, thoroughly perfused with scientific information and magic and ritual and fantasy, this book is an enigma.
At the close of the book Anthony adds the following: ‘The birth of the book occurred after I died in a nightmare and the things that happened after I died. I woke up from my father’s couch and wondered what the afterlife was about. I researched all I could find and found myself writing, and when I wrote, I questioned if I was writing a book based on a nightmare or the book was writing me into something I had no control over.’
The storyline follows the life of one Hades, born of Hagar (the name of infamous Egyptian slave of Abraham’s wife Sarah who bore Abraham children), who when discarded by his mother is set upon the world to search his identity and seek ‘the Seventh King’ referenced in Revelations.
The boy becomes a man, and though steeped in anger he manages to uncover his strange powers and visions, spend time as a Buddhist monk, and follows schemes and changes through the globe (and beyond…), seeking The Seventh King. It is a strange and challenging story, at once fascinating to read and confusing to comprehend.
The mixture of science fiction fantasy with contemporary thoughts is problematic. One is never sure if Anthony is lauding the Book of Revelations as the first true sci-fi book ever written or whether he maintains his references to a known source as a means of grounding his story. The Prologue of this book is so shrouded in mystery that it is as difficult to read as the transcript of, say, a séance. That Anthony has a rich imagination and a gift for writing is apparent from this first novel. Yet after reading the book (and it is fascinating enough to hold attention to the end!) this reader feels the need for a very strong Editor. The threads of thought between the confrontations that present themselves to Everyman in the quest for understanding this world, the universe, God, power, the dynamics of physical attraction, the meaning of existence - all of these float in and out of the narrative and need better connection. And a keen eye for punctuation and misspelled words would also assist the flow.
But the main missing ingredient in this interesting first novel is information about the author himself. He obviously has a rich imagination and with further writing will polish his skills as a novelist.
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