In the third installment of Biesele’s (The Saeshell Book of Time: Part 2: Rebirth of Innocents, 2013, etc.) sci-fi/fantasy series, two Earthlings embrace their destinies as allies and enemies complicate their path.
The story picks up on the planet Sophista, where evolutionarily advanced non-corporeal energy creatures live symbiotically with telepathic humans. The Sophistan collective is testing Stefan and Tova2—a powerful, mated pair of human hybrids, born on Earth, who have evolved into “new and unique life forms” and are fated to rule Earth and protect its telepaths. The Sophistans are ruthlessly logical and expect Stefan and Tova2 to rule rationally, but their own motivations are murky. Tova2 is forced to create and destroy a helpless life form, and, later, she and Stefan confront a nightmarish creature that has caused a Sophistan energy-matter hybrid to become sinister and violent. Later, Tova2 and Stefan find out that they, along with Stefan’s gifted younger sister, Aleah, are part of a creature called Atreyeu that exists outside of time. Stefan and Tova2’s future unborn son, who travels through time with Atreyeu’s offspring, also visits them at significant moments, watching as they negotiate challenges and locate telepaths on Earth, including the young Tyco and Ty. Along the way, author Biesele also provides substantive commentary on rationalism versus empathy, aggression versus passivity, and time paradoxes. Given the story’s vast complexity, the first two installments are required reading. Even then, this book’s many secretive characters, cacophonous telepathic conversations, ambiguous innuendos and non-sequential events will likely make the book quite difficult for casual readers to enjoy. It’s a dense amalgam of drama and philosophy that, even for aficionados, may require another installment to fully clarify.
A dense sci-fi tale that will likely appeal primarily to fans of previous books in the series.
