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** spoiler alert ** So many moons ago the world appeared simpler, kinder, more tranquil & settled. Conceivably, this is false. The species of which we are a part—should some other form of intelligence penetrate the linguistic barriers that keep us apart, may they regard this written word with benevolence—has always acted contrary to progress. This is oversimplifying the issue, of which I am aware. However, it remains true, nevertheless. Decades have passed since the wheel became the gem on which we rode swiftly & that which allowed any number of new features to become introduced into our society. Did the wheel hinder us? How might the wheel regard the work we have done thanks to its shape & stature? A silly question, but, one I ask earnestly.

Simple questions lead to the core of an issue. Can we state with certainty that we have always been ignorant of doing the right thing or could we blame the inconvenience of this decision as the reason why we have not taken it? In humanity, there is the possibility of greatness. Our ability to communicate with each other, across a divisive landscape that shapes our culture & comprehension of the world is fantastic.

We have words to describe the most abstract aspect of our personal experiences, ones we discover, other people are exposed to as well. What a beautiful thing it is to be human. The snow & ice, through grains of sand & boiling heat; amidst waves of wind & cooling green, we have found one another, over & over again, & have had the privilege of understanding that the very nature of our existence is to be intertwined with each other.

Unfortunately, the responsibility of such a powerful machine has allowed us to forget ourselves. Perhaps it is not all deep thinkers who ponder the nature of existence & I am sure that not all weapon-wielding psychopaths reflect on the moronic nature of a single truth to rule them all. In between these extremes are those we meet in passing, those whose faces pixelate the screens, never to breathe life into the air again. How might we change the nature of our person if, at our core, the defensiveness of our understanding of life places us at a disadvantage?

Such are the questions that arose while I read this story. The narrator permits us our questions knowing he has no answers, he does not even pretend to care; these questions are our responsibility & what we do with the answers we find is our choice. This same narrator shares a secret with the reader which is so devious, dark, & deranged, that one cannot help but revise the dogma that has brought them to the point of belief. Here we arrive at the part that I find pleasure in most; the essence.

This is a story about a man who was once a combatant for his people & their system of belief. The narrator remains nameless—his identification matters little here, one must remember this. Rather, what the reader is meant to focus on are the facts. The narrator is a man, he is a skilled craftsman, & linguist. He was once a slave to the people he attempted to eradicate & somehow scammed his way into freedom.

Where the reader meets this man is, again, of little consequence though, those with a taste for details will revel in the lines of this story. The workshop, the tools, the light fixtures, & window panes, all describe the setting that will cement itself into the mind of the reader who is most likely to trust the narrator; a man who lies to stay alive.

His story follows him & his discovery, by chance & through the forced employment tinged with the threat of torture & death, of a piece of religious text that explains the beginning of the universe, or to be more clear, the original truth of existence.

Should there be a reader among us who has had no exposure to such texts they may find a new concept presented in this story. Unlike this imaginary innocent individual, I have long revelled at the logistics of believing one book contained everything that mattered. Perhaps you laugh thinking of me sitting, walking, crouching, & leaning ruminating over this same premise, tirelessly. I promise you, it brings great humour to my life.

The narrator is quite my polar opposite & perhaps this is a consequence of his inadvertent serfdom. For the price of being allowed to live a few weeks longer, the narrator must translate & transcribe afresh the text handed to him by the ghoulish woman whose sister sits comfortably in a council seat. This world is not like ours. The author has ensured that sufficient details were given to make the reader forget whose story is being told. Presumably, one could clock the allegory for what it is; a note on the stupidity of an all-consuming religion. Of course, who am I to judge—glass houses & all of that? Except, if we were all made from the same form, this invisible Deosis thought enough of me to allow me the sloppy center that runs the goading queries I send his way. Therefore, perhaps I am perfectly positioned to judge.

I am getting ahead of myself, unlike the narrator who paces the story perfectly, I find impatience seeping into my Cerebrum. Why did the narrator believe that his people were the only people who understood the truth? Why did a genocidal rampage, also known as a crusade, a jihad, or a sanctum bellum, need to take place? Could not the people in this story live at peace with the understanding that there was no logic in believing that only one dogma of belief was authentic & true? Why is it so complicated to accept that human beings may never hold the truth they seek & rather than burn the world in an attempt to find some cave dweller’s drawing of a star or some door in the wall, we might all do well to focus on the dying mantle on which we lean for support?

The narrator does not perturb himself with such questions. His story is simple, he does a job & this is how he spends his days. He changes course only when the antagonist makes her way to his workshop, at which point, he plots her death & then he is set free to begin anew.

The simplistic nature of this story piqued my fancy while I was reading it & I ruminated on how to best proceed with a review that would touch on religious beliefs as so many others have already done such as my review of Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita� (1967), & J.D. Salinger’s “Franny and Zooey� (1957).

You may note that I enjoy the discourse that accompanies such texts. I find religion intriguing, in the same way that the decomposition of a corpse is scientifically pertinent & irresistible. Though, I did not know that this story would contain a quirky topic that proves to be the well of much delightful pontification, I am glad to have come upon it.

Whereas, the narrator was a man I would have loved to sneak around town learning to understand, the short-lived nature of our soured romance within the pages left me dripping for more. I wanted to know his secrets so that I could break them off on my teeth like frozen grapes. I wanted to savour the butter tart confection of what he kept hidden from me. All of this is flimsy & sugary for my sake & those of other readers. The author left the story where it ended. The narrator grew old whereas I am not yet; How can I follow him & his lies if we will part with finality when one of us dies?

What makes this story so sickly sweet is the fact that it is short. The sections filled with descriptions of the past, the wars, the murder, the violence, & gore, all speak to a world that many readers will not understand. Yet, at the same time, it exists right next door. This terrible truth will leave readers to masticate at their discretion, the narrator has more to share. For when the death of the evil witch-like lady is through, the ogress slain, & the charming prince of thieves returns to his peaceful life of memories that haunt him like Meningitis, the literature that could change the world goes into a vault & is only seen again at the end.

Will readers believe that the narrator’s fears were unjustified? Will a reader choose to think that the script was a forgery? Is it plausible to believe that the massacre of thousands of people was worth it in the name of the truth?

The narrator does not ask these questions. As I said he speaks only of the facts he wishes the reader to know such as the creation of coins & the linguistic family of an old tongue. His trust in the reader is not, trust at all, but a coyly set diversion & time for the reader to forgive themselves for the nasty rogue feeling of time wasted with the slave, the serf, the craftsman, the linguist, the old man who might have been wrong & was responsible for the murder of people the reader will never know or understand.

Will the reader believe the narrator when he wanders off with what may be a forgery or will they hold steady, believing that the man of many thoughts could not deceive them if he understood the value of the truth?

Ultimately, I feel a keen enjoyment thinking of this story as I write this review. I enjoyed the narrator, I appreciated that he was a flawed man who lied & killed & created beautiful things because he spent years enslaved & was taught how. I relish the world-building that the author gave me & how he hid the two-pronged road right in between my eyes waiting for me to leer forward & impale the irises through which I read his text.

This story is easy & simple, the narrator is not a man with time to galavant down memory lane though he shows the reader down hallways littered with crumbs of a life he cannot escape; all this made of him a character who coloured the paragraphs of a story too familiar to be fiction.

Supposing that everything he said was true, the lives of thousands, millions, or billions, were lost to the inquisitive & salivating tongue of the serpent who masquerades as the gentle son of a soul that saw him die by his own naive hands; to believe that man is unable to trade truths for freedom is fantastical, maniacal, & sad.

In too many stories the hero falls prey to the moors he once called home & where is his God then? Who saves the man who has abandoned his life for a single book on which the premise of his entire existence lies? Were it false prophecies we may always celebrate the end of a world that never comes. However, one need not wait long, for the barrel of freedom is aimed just right, surely this time, the soul will be set free.

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