The Cult Candidate by Richard Monaco
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

New Age Thriller.

What an odd concept, no? Or perhaps it's a thing that used to be rather common but now has kinda gone the way of the 90's. Of course, that's kinda the point. This one was first published in '79 and is now being re-released.

So how was it? Well, I came into it thinking I'd be falling under the spell of a cult, New Age or otherwise, with possibly a bit of trouble extricating myself and/or family getting all up in arms with my predicament, but how would I have guessed that this would be a murder mystery and eventually a blowout epic tale of politics and mysticism and bright glowing things? I couldn't!

In point of fact, this is a New Age Thriller, with all the old concepts of astral projection, aura reading, manipulation of time and space and cheating death and above all, energy, energy, energy. :) It winds up being a hell of a wild ride that reminded me of some Depak chopra novels later on down the timestream. Really wild.

And I was also reminded, amusedly, of Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum for what it has to say about any book that brings up the Templar Knights. Or the Spear of Longinus.

I'm just not sure if this novel is quite to the point where its outdated, because most of it could work quite well as a modern rendition with a bit of squinting, but for the primary tale, it still works pretty well.

It also feels like a blast from the past. Or if you folks have never really encountered a New Age Guru before, but always wanted to, then come on in! The water's fine! :)

Thanks to Netgalley for this ARC!

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