REDEMPTION

A novel focuses on the mystical lineage of a golden cross.

Cassidy winds a highly complex historical fiction tale around the stories of two families, each of which is connected in some way to an ancient golden cross. The bulk of the narrative’s early sections involves long, expository conversations between David Michael Sonneman and a stand-in for the author named Ronan Cassidy. These chats range over large swaths of European and American history, with a particular emphasis running throughout the entire book on the machinations of Western financial institutions. The narrative follows David and his sister, Nadie; Ronan; their descendants; and the people in their orbits through major periods of history, including the Crusades and the Spanish Empire, always touching on the survival of that golden cross but usually broadening to explore the money situations of every era. This leads to a lot of exposition about the Federal Reserve, the gold standard, the nature of inflation, and the activities of the United States Treasury. “By 1980,” one such passage goes, “the purely fiat reserve currency known as the dollar was fully supported internationally on three major fronts: The excess dollars created through the continuing US trade deficit were being mopped up by the central banks in the form of Treasury purchases by the trade surplus nations, in effect sterilizing the dilutive effects of those excess dollars.” As the plot follows the Sonneman and Cassidy families, the true nature of the golden cross is gradually disclosed.

In this series opener, author Cassidy deftly offers steadily mounting revelations while tracing the journeys of the two families. The bones of his richly detailed story are captivating and will appeal to die-hard fantasy fans. But the author writes most of this material in turgid prose. In addition, there is virtually no action or even plot motion in the work, and most of the characters sound the same, talking like 19th-century theater actors. At one point, Ronan asserts: “I speak to you with certainty, good Sir. I say further that no man who truly believes would follow such a darkened path and embrace the feelings of absolute loss that accompany obtaining a personal kingdom of any size appropriated through acts of injustice upon this earth.” Another passage focusing on a character simply called “the man” goes: “I do believe that I understand your intent, Mr. Cassidy. Yet perhaps you do not fully understand the certainty of the response which is required by your reply per the terms of our agreement, an agreement entered into amongst honorable friends.” The only thing that could rescue such stiff writing would be a fantastically original story, and there are few hints of that in these pages. Instead, the tale delivers a fairly standard, mystic-MacGuffin plotline of a type readers will have encountered many times, starting with the novels by Dan Brown. This book’s plot can’t do much against lines like “The boy reached down purposefully and once again delicately parted away the last and the tangled strands of her matted hair that had somehow failed to clear her cheeks and forehead when he tended to her earlier.”

An intriguing but uneven tale of two families.