Our good friend Blair MacKenzie Blake – website content manager for the mighty Tool, and contributor to every volume of our Darklore series – has just released his second novel, entitled The Paragon Junk, and it is available from most online booksellers (Amazon link here – note that Amazon has limited stock and some algorithm issues, so it might pay to look around for third-party seller options or an online store that can provide timely delivery).
As Darklore readers will know, Blair has a fantastic way with words and a deep knowledge of many esoteric subjects – from the occult, to UFOs, hidden history and psychedelics. So it’s no surprise that the novel covers much of this ground, and is presented in shimmering prose to boot!
Here’s the blurb:
When cryptic messages begin to appear in the blog threads of a noted skeptic of fringe-ologists (especially the pseudoscientific ideas of ancient astronaut theorists), at first the cyber-attacks are dismissed as esoteric jabberwocky trumpeted by the latest Bay Area cult. Before long, podcasts debunking UFO super-believers are also breached with a strikingly futuristic aesthetic that’s as puzzling as the abstruse content. While dealing with these intrusions, there are further problems to contend with at his Silicon Valley condo: the teenage son of his live-in girlfriend has transhuman aspirations and his gorgeous bae (who likes to wear silver spandex bodysuits and perfumes with curious metallic notes) is constantly feeding him a series of mind-melting scenarios, including rumors that his geneticist mom is engaged with covert experiments involving more radical edits to the human genome than are included in Cellectech’s glossy brochure for designer babies. Add to this the shadowy secret society that’s convinced the phantom web messages pertain to forbidden knowledge redacted from the condensed Garden of Eden myth. For reasons known only by the inner circle of Phoenix Orientum, they suspect the zealously guarded means for rejuvenating humanity has been implanted in the skeptic’s head, secured by a nearly impenetrable mind-lock.
Being pursued by those with a sinister veneer, while at the same time looking for more prosaic explanations for the paranormal episodes that now plague his daily existence, it’s while reluctantly participating as the “balance” in a film documentary by startup Paragon Makings that high strangeness challenges any rational interpretations. What awaits is a fateful discovery that even the blogsite weirdies, paleo-contact luminaries and a mischievous pair of bio-hackers could never have imagined.
The Paragon Junk is the second book in a projected trilogy – although it can easily be read as a stand-alone novel – with the first book being The Othering (soon to be re-released in paperback after being previously published as a limited edition).
