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    The Secret Book of Sacred Things
    The Secret Book of Sacred Things
    The Secret Book of Sacred Things
    Ebook323 pages5 hours

    The Secret Book of Sacred Things

    By Torsten Krol

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    A fantastic journey into a postapocalyptic world, seen through the eyes of a 12-year-old girl, told by a master storyteller. For fans of China Mieville and the sci-fi of Margaret Atwood and Doris Lessing.

    The coming of the Great Stone destroyed almost everything that used to be. But high in one remote valley, the Church of Selene has found its way back from ruin. Sister Luka and her female converts offer sacrifices to the scarred (and very close) moon that hangs over their convent. It has been this way since the Stone hit. Among the Little Sisters of Selene is 12-year-old Aurora, respected Scribe of the church. She endlessly writes down the name of the moon to keep her in the sky where she belongs. But Aurora has a secret book she keeps hidden in her Scribe's chamber and into this diary she pours out her hopes and desires. Upsetting this fragile equilibrium is Willa, a young tomboy whose flamboyant arrival threatens the hard-won status quo of the sisters' community. As Aurora and Willa inch toward friendship, insurrection grows. But when an unexpected marvel occurs in the sky, it is clear that Aurora's work as the Scribe has failed. The moon is threatening to remake the world all over again. This is the Secret Book of Sacred Things, this is Aurora's story.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAtlantic Books
    Release dateOct 1, 2012
    ISBN9780857896605
    The Secret Book of Sacred Things
    Author

    Torsten Krol

    Torsten Krol is a writer. Nothing further is known about him. His novel Callisto was published by Atlantic Books in 2007 and The Dolphin People in 2008.

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    • 1/5
      Krol has a reputation as a brilliant, reclusive author, who isn't read by many but his few constitute a cult following. I won't be joining the cult: this book sucked.Rory is living in, essentially a convent of moon-worshipping women, who rule over a valley in a post-apocalyptic world. The apocalypse, in this case, was a large asteroid hitting the moon sometime in our near future, a couple hundred years past for Rory. The asteroid knocked the moon out of its proper orbit, putting it on a much more eccentric elliptical route around the earth in which it passes very close every seven days (I take this to mean that the 'month' is now two weeks long). About halfway through the book, the Earth, which took heavy damage from all the debris (hence, destruction of civilization), and has been somewhat unsteady in its orbit for some time, suddenly drops over on its side so that the North pole faces the sun., some sort of delayed effect of the centuries-earlier impact. Yeah, right.This was not the only yeah-right moment in the book. The women who founded this colony were people of our near future, but I can't really imagine people of our near future believing these things (our narrator, Rory, is in charge of writing the name “Selene” repeatedly to keep the moon in the sky – seriously?). This village in the mountains and a fishing village several days away appear to contain the only remaining people, and the stories from the time of the asteroid don't mention any other survivors, either. Again, yeah, right.Krol seems to be given a lot of credit for insight into the human condition, and human responses to extreme situations, but I didn't find anything terribly insightful or original here in that respect.The most original part of the book is that it's told through the voice of Rory, an egotistical, fanatical, twelve-year-old girl. Downside: he's captured her voice really quite well, so you have to suffer through her narration throughout the story (she seems to start growing up about halfway through, but quickly reverts). I'm really glad that I wasn't much of a diary-writer at that age.There's really nothing to recommend this – if you want post-apocalyptic fiction, go read Atwood, or Orwell, or...
    • 5/5
      This is the way the world ends: with neither a bang nor a whimper but with a long drawn-out howl of despair. After an asteroid strike, the earth is in its dying throes. Saved from complete and instant annihilation by the moon having taken a glancing blow, thus lessening the impact of the collision, small pockets of humanity still remain and one of these is the all-female, moon-worshipping society in which Aurora (Rory) is the scribe, whose job it is to write down the name of the moon repeatedly every day, and it is by this means that the moon can be held in the sky and prevented from finishing the job begun by the asteroid.Things are different in this world: the orbit of the moon and earth have changed; men, who were responsible for the anger of the gods, are peripheral and have their own society in a nearby village and the women await the coming of a seer who will reveal to them the wishes of Selene, the moon goddess. But the men from the village have their own ideas about how things should be run and conflict between the two societies becomes inevitableKrol has more than proved himself as a writer in his previous novels, 'The Dolphin People' and 'Callisto', and 'The Secret Book of Sacred Things' confirms him as one of the most exciting authors around. Very little is known of the man himself and there is some speculation as to whether Krol may simply be the pseudonym of another, better-known writer. While this was interesting to begin with, to me it just seems a bit of a distraction now as there is no need for the author of these excellent books to hang on the coat-tails of any other novelist - the books are plenty good enough to succeed by their own merits and it is beyond me to understand why they don't have a much larger following. If you try any 'unknown' author in 2013, make it this one - you won't be sorry.

    Book preview

    The Secret Book of Sacred Things - Torsten Krol

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