SERIES TOUR
Book Title: Jamari and the Manhood Rites Trilogy
Author: R. Roderick Rowe
Publisher: RWCollins Publishing
Cover Artist: Farland Publishing
Genre: Fantasy Fiction, Epic Fantasy, Dystopian Fiction, Future Fiction
Tropes: Forbidden love, Magical Realism
Themes: Coming of age, Sexuality,
Heat Rating: 3 flames
This is the introduction to the world of Paradigm Lost, which currently includes this trilogy and also two Gay Erotica books.
The trilogy is a very long story divided into three parts.
BOOK 1
Title: Jamari and the Manhood Rites
Length: 211 pages
This book does not end on a cliffhanger.
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Blurb
A forest paradise surrounded by lands gutted from corporate greed. The Elk Creek Tribe holds the hope for mankind’s future. One young man becomes paramount in bringing spirituality back into a desolate and hostile world. But first he must find himself.
Follow the life of a young man in the year 2115 as he decides to take on the challenge of the Manhood Rites. Journey with Jamari as he discovers his world, his community and his culture.
BOOK 2
Title: Jamari Shaman
Length: 242 pages
This book ends on a cliffhanger.
Buy Links
Blurb
A forest paradise surrounded by lands gutted from corporate greed. The Elk Creek Tribe holds the hope for mankind’s future. One young man becomes paramount in bringing spirituality back into a desolate and hostile world. But first he must find himself.
Jamari must take on the challenges of The Manhood Rites before he can become a full citizen of The Elk Creek Tribe. He doesn't expect the spiritual challenge that awaits him when he breaks into the spirit realm in his daily meditations. And he's not sure he's ready to accept what it means when he does. Can he accept his fate and transform into the respected spiritual leader he is destined to become? Is he ready to face the passage into his own spirit and soul? Travel with Jamari as he embarks on a journey down through tribal lands to the coast. Watch as he learns of other peoples outside the Elk Creek Tribe. Be a part of Jamari's long journey home when tragedy strikes.
BOOK 3
Title: The Founder’s Sons
Length: 316 pages
This book does not end on a cliffhanger.
Buy Links
Blurb
A forest paradise surrounded by lands gutted from corporate greed. The Elk Creek Tribe holds the hope for mankind’s future. One young man becomes paramount in bringing spirituality back into a desolate and hostile world. But first he must find himself.
When Native American Mythology meets Celtic Druidism in a culture built around Gnostic Christianity, strange things come to life! Journey with Jamari as he discovers his world, his community and his culture.
Jamari works to understand a repeated spiritual vision as he also learns shamanism from the powerful Peter Shaman, 2nd Knight Shaman of the Elk Creek Tribe. He finds himself caught up in struggles, both physical and spiritual, as the world around him explodes in chaos and conquest.
In the world of 2115, nearly 100 years after the Pacific Rim erupted in a series of quakes, The Tribe remains the Pacific Northwest's best hope of survival. Promoting peace, harmony, and the sharing of resources, The Tribe yet maintains a ferocious ability to defend itself from outsiders and wildlings. The Elk Creek Tribe, located near the town of Yoncalla, in Southwest Oregon, is the strongest civilization remaining in the region that has been long-abandoned by the mega-corps who decided that the sparse lands weren't viable investments to rebuild roads and infrastructure to bring back into the fold.
The Tribe has defied all reason and logic, building a culture and a community that not just survives, but thrives, on the isolation, learning to live closer to the land, honoring the land and animals in return. Jamari has encountered spirit animals before, having earned two totems that have been recognized as his very own link to the Great Spirit. Over all, Eagle has visited him and marked him as His own.
He has to go on a frightening quest in order to satisfy a driving Vision. His friends, teachers and mentors guide him through this portion of his journey, building relationships that will span all time.
Jamari has been traveling Tribal Lands for two years in his quest to master the Manhood Rites and become a full citizen of the Elk Creek Tribe. It's now 2117 and he's getting his first views of the outer world. The outer world has been described as rapacious and vicious but, that information has not prepared him for what can happen when his world becomes the target of the Mega Corps who rule those other lands and governments. They've exhausted Oregon's resources and now they're setting eyes on the forest lands the Tribe has managed for over 100 years.
Along with threats and incursions from outside, Jamari is battling to understand why he disagrees with some major ethos of his own Tribe. His Shamanistic talents are growing and he's becoming a reluctant legend within the Tribe. Hints of a top spot in Tribal Management and control are battling with growing internal unrest as he realizes just how big the changes the Tribe must make really are.
Can he earn the position that seems so readily his? Can he use it to make changes to better the Tribe? Can he gather the courage to let God fully enter into his corporeal body? What will he become if he does?
Excerpt
From “Jamari Shaman” This is the first evidence that Jamari may have shamanic abilities.
The winter woods were a quieter place. With his breath restored from his climb, he turned and headed up again. In just over a half hour, he reached his tiny little ridge-top meadow.
He paused there, wondering how he was going to settle himself in for his meditations on the water-soaked ground. He turned around a couple times, looking for a suitable place. With the bare branches of the oaks and the occasional maple offering scant shelter to form a dry spot, he simply emptied his leather carry pouch of the lunch items and settled the pouch onto the ground in a tuft of brown grass stems. He sat his bow beside the seat and settled himself for meditation.
As he was bringing himself to focus, he watched a hawk circle into view from above the rise to his south. Seeming to catch the piercing gaze of that hovering hunter, he imagined what those keen eyes might be finding in the wintry day. A mouse maybe. Or a chipmunk. If it’s lucky, maybe a small rabbit. Jamari’s eyes lost their focus on the real world as he entered into this imagining.
He is floating in a careful circle when he sees a twitch of grass below. He immediately enters into a hover, with wings shifting to a fast flutter to hold him in place, using his tail feathers to balance himself on the cushion of air. Another twitch in the grass. It’s a squirrel! Drawn out into the meadow to dig up a cached nut.
Seeing an opening, he shifts his wings into dive mode, making his whole body into a sharp arrow, diving down unseen, unheard, until his shadow crosses over the prey. It’s too late, though. He’s opening his wings, turning up his body, and swinging his clawed feet down to snag the furry body in a spine-snapping jerk, then using the remaining momentum of his dive to pull the lifeless body aloft.
Hunger. Hunger that should be satiated. Driving him on, turning him toward the largest prey he’s ever taken on. But the hunger!
Jamari jolted out of the trance in sudden knowing and leapt to his feet, grabbing the bow and turning around as he pulled an arrow into draw. He wasn’t even fully drawn, or truly aimed, when he realized that the arrow must go now! He released and watched the arrow slip into the breast of the springing cougar.
Too late! The cat’s momentum was going to carry it into him anyway! Jamari flung up his left arm, still holding the bow for some level of shielding and reached for his knife with his right hand. The weight of the cougar carried him over backward as he saw the jaws clamp onto the wood of his bow, saw and felt the wood crush under the pressure, then felt claws penetrating his heavy leather sleeve and an intense pummeling at his abdomen as the hind legs dug in.
He got the knife in hand and plunged it into the side of the maddened animal just behind the shoulder.
When the cougar turned a snarling set of fangs to Jamari’s head and neck, he was very convinced that it was all over for him. He kept pushing away with his injured left arm. He twisted the wrist of his knife hand to force the blade up toward the spine from the inside in a final attempt.
Relief as the cat slumps and the sliding blade reached something vital. It’s snarl of rage turned to a gasp as it collapsed down onto Jamari, with only enough energy remaining for a feeble clawing attempt that didn’t even penetrate the leather.
Shocked, Jamari pushed the body aside, leaping to his feet to run. He saw the lifeless eyes, though, and held fast, shaking: all-over shaking, tremors so strong he lost his grip on the knife he hadn’t even noticed that he still held. When he reached down for the knife, he felt a stabbing pain as the leather of his left sleeve shifted over the open wound in his forearm. Gasping, he looked down to see blood dripping from the hole in his sleeve and felt a crawling sensation as a red rivulet dripped from his wrist.
Sitting back down onto the somehow-undisturbed leather pouch, he held his left arm in his right hand for a moment, before remembering that he should get to the wound and stop the bleeding. He found it awkward, trying to remove his shirt with only one arm as he favored the injured one. He suffered a couple of bumps that made him feel as though his skin was being freshly violated each time. He persevered, though; and once he got the jerkin off, he realized that two claws had penetrated to give him a double cut. Deep enough that it would certainly need stitches, but not life-threatening. He used his knife to cut the damaged part of the sleeve from his jerkin, which he then cut into strips, and used a wad of sanitary cloth from the pouch to form a bandage.
Once he had the arm bandaged, using his teeth to hold the leather strip on one end while he tied the knots, he knelt down beside the cougar, laying his good right hand on her head. “I thank you for giving yourself so that my tribe will not go hungry. You honor me with your gift.”
He offered the Hunter’s Thanks, hoping that it was appropriate in this circumstance. He hadn’t actually set out to hunt a cougar, after all, and, do you thank the one who was hunting you? He donned the mutilated jerkin for its warmth.
About the Author
Roderick Rowe studied writing in college for several years, working as assistant editor and then editor for his school’s literary magazine. He also spent a term as copy editor for the campus newspaper. He is a gay man and uses this “affliction” to build characters and situations in his fictional work. Rowe has published several short stories and an occasional poem. After ending a twenty-year career unexpectedly in 2015, Rowe decided to write his first novel. “Jamari and the Manhood Rites, Part I” was completed in two months, then he settled in to conduct editing – complete new landscape design with a new Koi pond, a new library built into the spare room in his home, the cleanest his house had ever been – but the editing eventually got completed.
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