[Tiste Simeon]

Anyone heard of this guy? His first book in the "Fourth Realm" Trilogy, called "The Traveller" came out in 2005, so I wouldn't be surprised if people on here have heard of him.

Anyways I am currently reading through this book, and it is very interesting. The author himself is a bit of a mystery... He is writing under an assumed name, and no-one knows a thing about him. He contacts his editors and manager etc. via satellite phone and uses a voice thing to disguise what he sounds like. He has only given a few things away, and remains to this day completely anonymous.

His books reflect this lifestyle, and they are most fascinating. They are set in this world, now, but with a definite fantasy twist. There are those in the world called Travellers, who can take their soul and leave their body. These are people who come back from different realms, and are changed by their experience, and always shake up the world with their new found insight and teaching. However there is a powerful, hidden group called the Brethren, or Tabula (to their enemies) who claim to be fighting for order and peace, but in reality they want to control everyone, and these Travellers represent a danger to this lust for power. Throughout history the Tabula have been hunting down and killing travellers, whose only protection is from another group of cold, hard killers called Harlequins whose sole purpose throughout time has been to fight the Tabula to help the Travellers. The Traveller, the first of the trilogy follows a Harlequin called Maya who has to find two brothers who could be the last Travellers left on earth, before the Tabula do. This time they don't want to kill the brothers, but use them for some ominous purpose...

This book I have found scarily real. The characters spend their time living "Off Grid" or "away from the Vast Machine" which means, the society whereby people can watch you every step of the way, based on tracing phone calls, internet usage and credit cards etc. The aim of the Tabula is to make society believe that they are being watched in absolutely every aspect of their lives, thus preventing them from doing anything wrong, thus creating the perfect and ordered society they want, and which Travellers seem to mess up at every time.

I am about three quarters of the way through the first book and have ordered the second two. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading it, despite being called "The New Da Vinci Code" which slightly put me off at first. But seriously, the concept behind it all is pretty cool, and the fact that the author himself lives "off grid" makes for a fascinating read.

Anyone else read it/heard about it?

[Illuyankas]

John Twelve Hawks is of course twelve hawk authors collaborating.

It would only take one hawk to carry a satellite phone, and eleven others to handle the word processor. My theory is flawless.

[Abyss]

I've seen these around but brief glances at internut reviews have put me off. Be interested to know if you're happy with the finished trilogy.

- Abyss, means to say we want your first response and any second thoughts about the third book set in the Fourth Realm...

[Aptorian]

The travelling to other worlds aside, the description of the story reminds me of the movie Jumper.

[Salt-Man Z]

I only know of him because we have the same last name. (Well, "Hawks", anyway.)

Though, come to think of it, "Twelve Hawks" almost sounds like an American Indian kinda name...

This post has been edited by Salt-Man Z: 19 May 2010 - 08:20 PM

[Tiste Simeon]

He isn't American Indian, according to Wikipedia (read: he probably is American Indian...)

Abyss, am definitely going to read all three, may keep this thread updated. Am really enjoying it so far. Also, Fox have picked up the rights to the movie... Oh dear.

Illy... Your wisdom and insight astound me as ever!

[amphibian]

Random House made a huge push for the first book. I read the ARG of it and hated the book. It wasn't well put together, poorly written and the characters were unusually flat.

I think there's some online speculation that the author is the guy who wrote the Karate Kid movies and the 5th Element one as well. The off-the-grid stuff came off as pure marketing - because if you really wanted to stay off the grid, you'd do it like Thomas Pynchon or J.D. Salinger. Either the author never publishes or the author gives essentially zero interviews and never goes bragging about being off the grid.

[Use Of Weapons]

His editors will clearly know who he is in real life. They have to in order to process royalty payments and advance payments. Any suggestion otherwise is mere publicity fluff.

[Coco with marshmallows]

read the first one when it came out,

found it a little meh.

probably because I'd covered the Panopticon at uni,
and read a lot about Buddhist thought anyways (the 6 realms), so the unifying themes didn't particularly interest me as I didn't find them that well represented.

But that's just me. If you like them, more power to you.

[Tiste Simeon]

Well I finished the first one, still enjoying it though JTH put a pretentious little mini-essay at the end of it, talking about how we're always being watched and how we can help ourselves to live off the grid. It kind of ruined the ending for me. Second book arrived this morning, am looking forward to it.

@Coco, not ever read anything about the whole Panopticon thing so am finding it quite interesting as a concept.