A tale of Haven and Hades, of watchful Guides and transmigrating Souls, and of the little, green Soul, from the Order of Agitators, who derails them all.
Narrated from both sides of life, The Anomaly presents an alternate reality, a dimension where every Person is a Player, where every Player is a reincarnated Soul, and where every Soul is a patron of either Haven or Hades...except Zia.
Chilkoot Pass, Alaska 1898. From Zia's lies come a disastrous ripple effect; her 10th life ends, the paths of four others skew, and the cord to humanity's future shifts. Haven and Hades ignite into war. Across celestial and physical planes, Hades sends their most ruthless Soul--Triite, Order of Persuaders--to track, target, and coerce Zia. While fighting Hades' plots to claim or destroy her, Haven discovers a paradox within Zia's Soul--a devastating paradox. For Haven to have any chance of regaining the cord in the 21st Century, they must first win another battle--a battle of wits, wisdom, and strategies to redeem the irrepressible prankster, practiced opportunist, artful liar Zia.
My Review:
The Anomaly s was an excellent book that I couldn't stop reading.
The story flash like a fire crackers show all over the sky. It will sweeps you over like a Tornado which roll and leave nothing on its way. It was so different from anything that I meet in this subject, before and I so love that idea. Wendy Joyce treat all those questions of life, death, after life, good vs. bad, in her unique way:
Apparently, a chink may appear, causing what the powers that be may consider a flaw, an anomaly? as you cause a cluster of particles to a wake to its awareness there is always a chance that it will be something different from other clusters. This particles clusters are souls and they are the ultimate recyclable.
Zia, is a slight, green soul with purple hair from the Order of the Agitators, she has always been different, rebellious, and a little too inquisitive. Zia is a complex and hilariously fun character who bumbles her way admirably through to her destiny. Full of unique concepts and terrific character you will enjoy The Anomaly - I guarantee it.
She breaks all the rules but means well just the same. She just can't seem to fathom what she is doing wrong or why the Guides are cross with her. She just isn't like the other Souls in Haven. She never sent to haven like all the other souls, but to the divisional, and she think it is her guide fault. She also convince herself that it is better like this. She has only one friend Awen Order of messengers, but unfortunately he is a Dyad, which mean that he have a soul mate. Zia don't like his soul mate, Ereo, and she ignore her completely.
Every time she is sent to Earth to be born she messes up and the some in Haven fear she will turn from One (sort of like Good ones) and become one of Niie (basically the evil ones). Romal her former Guide transfer her to Alpha another kind of guide, a Peril Guide. Zia don't understand the meaning of this change - only those who can cause harm and don't have clear preference to go to haven get this kind of Guides. And because Zia caught the Niie 's interest.
The book start with - Chilkoot Pass, Alaska 1898. From Zia's lies come a disastrous ripple effect; her 10th life ends, the paths of four others skew, and the cord to humanity's future shifts.
Haven and Hades ignite into war. Across celestial and physical planes, Hades sends their most ruthless Soul--Triite, Order of Persuaders--to track, target, and coerce Zia. While fighting Hades' plots to claim or destroy her, Haven discovers a paradox within Zia's Soul--a devastating paradox. For Haven to have any chance of regaining the cord in the 21st Century, they must first win another battle--a battle of wits, wisdom, and strategies to redeem the irrepressible prankster, practiced opportunist, artful liar Zia.
Is she the problem in the big scheme of life, or is she the solution? What makes her so different from other souls?
Along Earth decades and in a very complicate waltz of steps and souls - Haven strategy against the Niie plans, is:
Every thing have to converge in the Neutral point. With same old/new characters in the play. Now Zia turn out first time as a female and she is the best persona ever. Each side place them carefully in chess like game. What is going to determine the result is the free will of these characters, which is the most sacred thing.
Prologue
April 3, 1898
Chilkoot Pass, Alaska
Beneath his feet, a mound of stones and ice entombed his Charge’s empty shell, and above his head, snow flurries shimmered in the flickering lights of concerned Guides. Those of a sensitive nature had asked, “Romal, would you like me to stay?” Others, more given to pointedness, had said, “Romal, your Charge left hours ago; why do you hover above the shell?”
Whether tactful or direct, all Guides shared genuine concern. Quite endearing, Romal thought, but also foolish and unnecessary. With a gracious smile, Romal ushered their leave. Apparently, though, they needed more ushering. Romal wagged his finger at them. “Do you intend to linger overhead until the Players glimpse your lights? And what absurdity will they conclude your lights to be? I suggest you see to your Charges’ Awakenings before your imprudent delays create a ridiculous legend within the Players’ history books.”
Instantly, sixty-two Guides vanished. Romal sighed, his eyes now turning toward Haven. “Well, One, so begins this corner of your tapestry.”
A team of rescue workers trudged past, their shoulders sagging, their steps stumbling. They were valiant men, but thoroughly fatigued. Still, how much effort did it take to turn their chins and notice the plot of snow they were leaving unsearched? Romal flinched at his selfish thought. The Players’ hands were blistered, their toes frostbitten. Their pain deserved regard; a Player’s shell did not. A Player’s shell had less value than a Player’s clothing. Shells always returned to dust; clothing, at least, could be worn again. Eventually, the workers would uncover the rest of the buried shells. Romal looked across the plateau to count just how many shells remained.
One? Romal cleared his throat of a grumble. Zia’s shell was the only body to have escaped their notice. Often lost as a Soul, always lost as a Player, Zia had now left a shell to be lost as well. Romal found no humor in this irony.
He peered into the lives of the rescue workers—natives, stampeders, and one retired detective, the eldest of the group. The man had a powerful stride—or so his companions perceived. In truth, arthritis knotted the man’s knees; his steps came down hard or they wouldn’t come down at all. Years of bone hitting bone had sunken the man’s cheeks into a permanent wince. Though the cold winds bit into the man’s joints, a complaint never left the man’s lips. Romal issued a vibration to the man’s heart. “Turn around.”
A group of tired heels were dragging up the icy slope when the detective’s chin jerked up, his steps halting, his spine straightening. Briefly, he held still, listening. He then swiveled, his hand shielding his eyes from wind and snow.
A stampeder nudged him. “Franklin, you coming?”
Franklin nodded but didn’t move. He saw the evidence of a thorough search—shallow holes and deep craters, dirt mounds and rock piles, boulders and tree limbs still wrapped in their hoisting ropes. Thorough, he told himself, but a queer feeling—an instinct, he figured—disagreed.
He waved the stampeder on and headed back.
Standing in the center of the searched area, Franklin noticed an embankment shadowing a mound of snow left undisturbed. “Darn.” He started toward it. A few feet from the spot, a blast of heat rushed into him. His steps faltered, but he caught himself quickly, his knees now bending freely and painlessly. He straightened with renewed vigor, but had no time to ponder this odd return of his health; he had work to do. He began to dig.
Over and over, dirt and ice flung from his shovel. Eventually, a body emerged—a body encased in red snow.
Franklin wiped the frost from his brow, his squint shifting from the blood on his shovel to the blood on the half-buried man. He knelt on the frozen mud for a closer look. “I’ll be darned.” He pulled off a glove.
Tailed to a frigid gust came a stampeder’s call, “You got a live one?”
His left hand railing the dirt and stones, his right hand probing the hole in the dead man’s chest, Franklin hadn’t a free arm to signal, no.
Stampeders, hopeful, hurried to Franklin, their shovels, canteens, and gurneys clanging.
Franklin got to his feet, his blood-soaked hand tightening into a fist.
When the rescue workers saw the body, they rested their shovels. A questioning look passed among them before it settled on Franklin.
“You suppose a tree branch got him?” a stampeder asked. “I bet that’s what got him. A tree branch came down and—”
“Diller, hush up,” Franklin said. “Ain’t no tree branch killed this man. He was good and dead before the avalanche.”
“Before the avalanche? What do you suppose stuck him in the chest?”
Franklin held up what his fist had enclosed. “A bullet.”
Wendy Joyce lives with her husband on a lavender farm in the Sierra Nevada foothills. As the owner of a government contracting company, Ms. Joyce has been writing and editing in the technical and legal arena for over 25 years. As a fiction writer, she debuts with The Anomaly.
A number of factors inspired The Anomaly.
Below is just one.
A decade ago...
I wanted to join a cult. Well, not actually join, but enter. The hundreds of questions I wanted to ask distilled down to this: "Why do you believe in this stuff?"
That Christmas, I unwrapped book after book carting one theme--Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer, Bizarre Beliefs by Simon Hoggart and Mike Hutchinson, and a textbook on cults, to name three from the dozens I received. Though I love the books and have read them cover to cover, they reveal how a trickster fools a person, but not why the person believes it.
For example, one book explains how a medium fashions a white vaporous stream, but not why the medium's client believes it is the ghost of her dead aunt. (Why not steam rising up from the floorboards? Why not an alien? Or why not a ghost posing as her relative?) Whether scientific or foolish, unlimited possibilities exist. The client, however, fixes onto one particular meaning...the medium's intended meaning. (By deepening and sustaining the client's belief, the medium will parlay her profits. Why doesn't that fact alone compel the client to explore other reasons for the vapor?)
Later, the client gathers with five friends and tells them about her experience. Two scoff, but three clutch onto the same meaning as the client. "Wow, you spoke to your aunt's ghost?"
Now they are a group of four holding onto one fixed meaning to a singular event. As they share the client's story with friends, their group grows. The more the group grows, the less open to alternative meanings each individual becomes.
"Mystic followers are idiots," I've heard countless times, and I wish it were true. Stupidity would make for a neat fit to my question. Unfortunately, intelligence has little to do with it. (Two of Manson's followers had brilliant IQs.) Further, religions gain members in the same way; The Bible is the event, billions of people comprise the client, and factions of Christianity form into distinct groups, each group committing to one interpretation of the event...an interpretation delivered by the leader/medium/head, who profits by quelling alternative ideas and by sustaining and deepening the group's belief.
If every dollar mailed to an Evangelist, or slipped into an offering basket, or tithed to a church were instead given directly to a charity—children's hospitals, homeless shelters, food banks—SOCIETY would benefit.
From the brain's consciousness to the Soul's awareness, from spiritual doctrines to quantum physics, we have an unending universe of possibilities to explain our existence. And yet...
Why do intelligent people latch onto one possibility to the dismissal of all others?
The Anomaly is premised, not on answering that question—no universal answer exists—but on presenting one possibility, drawn from the infinite number and told through a suspenseful tale that fuses both sides of life.
Wendy Joyce
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