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    An alternative way to explore and explain the mysteries of our world. "Published since 1985, online since 2001."

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New Book Reviews



By Brent Raynes


The King Who Refused to Die:
The Anunnaki and the Search for Immortality
By Zecharia Sitchin

Bear & Company
One Park Street
Rochester, Vermont 05767
2013, 250 pages, US $24.00
ISBN: 978-1-59143-177-0 (hardback)
ISBN: 978-1-59143-755-0

Reviewed by Brent Raynes

Zecharia Sitchin, known best as a scholarly author and researcher of the “ancient aliens” theory, a true rarity among such writers who had studied ancient Hebrew, Akkadian and Sumerian, actually wrote this fictional book with themes that are largely based upon his popular non-fictional based work The 12th Planet.

In this novel, an aging airline hostess named Astra receives an invitation from an unidentified source to a Special Gilgamesh Exhibit at the British Museum. She feels quite out of place and wonders why and who invited her there. Then she meets a mysterious stranger who knows many things about her, including the source of an unusual scar on one of her hands. Soon he reveals startling secrets of who she really is, including the pretty strange claim that she is a descendant of the ancient goddess Ishtar while he himself is a modern avatar of Gilgamesh himself. Things suddenly come to move at a rapid hot pepper pace and soon Astra and the former stranger become intimate lovers, re-enacting together an ancient sex ritual, and together soon find themselves in the ancient world of Sumer itself, where the avatar seeks to continue Gilgamesh’s quest for immortality – a quest that in a former lifetime Ishtar had denied him.

Well wouldn’t you know it, Gilgamesh’s second chance quickly runs into assorted complications in his return to the ancient world. But if you want to learn more, you’ll have to read it yourself. Sorry. I don’t want to give away too much of the book.

Sitchin takes his wealth of knowledge and research into that ancient world and creatively breathes life into the storyline and his characters in a way that is of course quite unique, original, and based on his scholarly non-fictional works.



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Haunted
By Alan Keen

Champagne Books
Scheduled release January 7th
View trailer

Reviewed by Brent Raynes

This is another novel. In it, Cameron Drake, a published novelist from England is enticed by his agent to move to a small island known as Mysteria, made up of fishermen and their families, located off the coast of Port Sandown, Oregon. Recently divorced, he needs a new beginning. Drake’s agent convinces the novelist that the change of scenery, the quiet and the isolation will help the author to write even more effectively. But the very day that Drake arrives on the island, strange and unexplained events begin to befall him. Unexplained voices and the frightening apparition of a long haired woman who seems to float in the air, suddenly make several appearances. Then people begin to mysteriously vanish, and based upon what a long time resident of the island, who possesses a keen knowledge of local folklore and matters metaphysical has shared with Drake, they must act quickly or else they too may all meet the same fate – a fate that local legend has it happened once many years before!

Well written and suspenseful, you’re quickly pulled in to the story and you find yourself riveted to each page. With snappy dialogue and loads of great mind pictures, you won’t want to put this book down until you’ve finished it.

Alan Keen is the noted author of Tales of Averon.


Friday, March 29, 2024