With a story set in Rome against the backdrop of events in the months surrounding the “End of History,” December 21, 2012, veteran Pleiadian channeler and Mayan Calendar specialist Barbara Hand Clow tries her hand at fiction.
Sharing elements of a Dan Brown metaphysical potboiler and a steamy Harlequin romance, Roman Church history here directly correlates with human corruption and depravity, arriving at the dawn of the foreordained new consciousness with the decline and fall of Pope Benedict and the rise of Francis, the New Age pontiff. Crises of faith abound, as do nipple-rousing sensuality and ghastly child abuse by priests. Devout but challenged Catholics, presumably numerous among targeted readers, may blanch at the suggestion that the antichrist arrived while Christ himself was still warm.
The first-century church of St. Peter insisted on the inclusion of the Judaic Old Testament and its patriarchal god, Yahweh, alongside the much briefer New Testament’s god of love and mercy, in the canon of Christ. Gnostic resistance brought on the first Christian reign of terror, initiating the two-millennial tradition of power and greed, tithes and inquisitions that informed and at times dominated church policy until the most recent sex abuse scandal caused its collapse and a new reformation.
The characters are largely intriguing and believable, and the plot moves along engagingly. As profound religious experiences proliferate, we learn to recognize evidence of the new consciousness in friends and ourselves, and forgive the author for occasionally indulging in excessive details of wardrobes and accessories of the most beautiful people anyone has ever seen.
Stylistically, we continually observe that any declarative sentence becomes a question with a simple act of punctuation? Since the book ends a bit inconclusively, perhaps this suggests a sequel? (Bear & Co.)
This article is a part of the Transformation Issue – December 2015/January 2016 issue of Whole Life Times.