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Alan
M. Brooker
A journalist with the Otago
Daily Times in Dunedin from 1954 to 1956, Alan drifted
away from writing for several years as he concentrated on
other creative interests, mainly photography. He Alan has also been heavily involved in sports, both playing and administrating. He is a life member of the Wellington Badminton Association, two Wellington badminton clubs and was given a Service Award by the New Zealand Badminton Federation for services to Badminton. His other sporting interests included underwater fishing and photography, rugby, cricket, field hockey, tennis and tramping. But his mind never stopped creating new worlds filled with strange and challenging people and events. When Alan was posted to Fiji in 1964 and became part of the group responsible for closing down the RNZAF station at Lauthala Bay, he started to fill in some of his "dead" time by creating "live worlds" based on his notes. Working for government services was unlike anything Alan had ever experienced so he made a serious personal management decision. He could play the stupid power games of the bureaucrats and suffer the resultant price (stress, frustration and possible breakdown), or he could develop some outside interests to counter-balance the stresses of his chosen occupation. Alan returned to writing and he used his imagination to create new worlds into which he could escape and vent his frustrations on characters that he could manipulate -- and even kill and torture if necessary -- to his heart's content. It's not really strange that some of them bear a strong resemblance to people he worked with in his past. Alan is no longer married. That episode in his life ended in late 1961, less than 12 months after he took the steps down the aisle in St Mary's of the Angels in Wellington. He has not remarried, and a serious commitment to work and sport replaced the longing for marital bliss. After more than 40 years on his own, he could well have become impossible to live with! Not content to just surf the web, Alan also designs web sites and keeps his own on line at The Gateway to an Unknown Reality at http://www.brookersworld.co.nz. Dreams of Charni Jason agrees to travel to Dunedin and flies down, arriving earlier than he intended. With time on his hands, he visits an antique bookshop he frequented when he was working in the city as a journalist. He finds an interesting book and an old metal amulet. He is unable to resist buying them. The psychologist asks him to stay a bit longer in Dunedin and to return the next day for some brain scans. Back in the motel, Jason examines his purchases -- and is surprised to find the amulet bears a strange resemblance to one he has often seen in his dreams. The nightmare returns, but this time it is much more vivid, as if he was actually taking a physical part in the unfolding events. He is on a strange and alien planet fighting for his life against mounted horsemen. He survives the battle, amazed at his own strength and dexterity in using the mighty axe he finds embedded in a log beside the lake. He is even more surprised when he wakes up in a strange room in a castle, to be greeted by the wizard Sento who introduces him to the Princess Charni -- the young woman from his dreams. Only now he is no longer dreaming, but is on the planet Praesepe and has been taken there by the wizard Sento to act as protector to the Princess against her evil and sadistic brother Khuramani. Sento tells him about the feud between the siblings and teaches him to use the powers of the amulet. While reluctant to demonstrate these powers because they give Jason the power to return to Earth, he has to show him what the amulet can do if Jason decides to stay and become Charni's protector. Using the amulet, Jason visits Khuramani's Keep. He is not impressed to find out that the evil prince intends to sacrifice his sister as a welcoming gesture to bring the Evil Ones to Praesepe, and even less impressed when Sento deciphers the information he brings back and tells them the date the ceremonies will be held. They don't have much time in which to plan their defense of Thurgan. Jason decides to stay and help. His new powers are soon put to the test when Khuramani launches a diversionary attack on the peaceful city of Cortano. The results are spectacular as the Black Horsemen are routed, but a second party of Black Horsemen have ambushed a wagon train and captured Ormuti, daughter of the Prince of Cortano. Khuramani knew that he would never be able to defeat Thurgan and grab Charni in a direct attack. Ormuti is to be the bait to drag her away from her loyal guards. Secure in her confidence of Jason's skills, Charni surrenders and is humiliated by her brother but kept intact for the ceremonies that have been planned for the Conjunction. Unfortunately, she is not intact, having lost her virginity to Jason, a fact kept hidden by Sento -- and a fact that results in the failure of the ceremonies to welcome the Evil Ones. Jason leads the attack on the Keep, but Khuramani manages to escape. Khuramani sends warriors in a night mission to Thurgan to kidnap Charni's blind sister Larni, but they are themselves surprised by strange beasts from the Northern Mountains. Jason follows their tracks into the mountains and is taken to meet their leaders. It is revealed that they are not beasts but one of the earlier races on Praesepe who had been driven from the lands during the conflict that almost destroyed the planet many hundred of years earlier. Larni stays with them as an honoured guest, the first step to bring them back into the mainstream of life on Praesepe. Their leader sends his daughter to Thurgan as an emissary of the Manappes. Khuramani has escaped in the chaos, shielded by the magic of his wizard Shartan. Jason and Thurgan have other thoughts on their minds -- they have a coronation to arrange. The coronation has a surprise ending and unexpected visitors as a new chapter is written into the annals of Thurgan. The only unhappy news is a message from the mountains that Khuramani is on the move again -- he has attacked a peaceful village in the forest and enslaved its inhabitants. It is time to resume the
chase. The Radicals A headless body is found by rangers in the Urewera National Park. Two young French tourists go missing in the same area. Their missing campervan is found abandoned near Wellington. The police publish photographs found in their camera -- a man in the picture turns up headless in Pahiatua. Then the male tramper's body is found at Wairoa. Adventurer Al Brookes, who has often assisted the Wellington Police, talks them into trying to find the missing girl using a psychic. Contact is made, but the prognosis is not good. The images she projects raise concerns that she might have fallen into the hands of a radical Maori extremist group. The police are unable to follow it up because of restrictions on racial harassment, so Brookes goes in under cover to try and reach the girl before she is killed. They get more than they bargain for -- two prisoners, more deaths and confirmation of their worst fears. Titoki, a Maori radical they had assumed dead, was very much alive and stirring up the tribes in the Ureweras. Of greater concern is that he is reverting to the ancient ways of his people, using fear and terror to hold his followers together. The army storms his stronghold, but he escapes again. He leaves behind records that establish overseas criminal links with a drug cartel. Police follow the New Zealand end of the trail and find that there is more than the Maori radicals involved in the chain -- Titoki had been planning to develop his links directly with the cartel so that he could cut out the middlemen. He had made the initial contacts and the plans were ready to cement the links with the interchange of envoys. Brookes poses as an envoy for the radicals and travels to Italy to follow up the links with the cartel only to get involved in a fight between rival Mafioso families. His cover is blown during an attack on the family villa but he talks his way into the rival camp in his guise as the New Zealand link to a developing hard drug market in the South Pacific. He enlists the drug bosses daughter to find two NZ women kidnapped by the Maori radicals and smuggled into Italy by the drug cartel -- one is his wife, the other a young girl he had befriended in an earlier battle with Titoki. The rescue doesn't go
according to plan. Their first attempts are thwarted, then
the trail leads them through the back streets of Naples
and into the harsh world of prostitution and masochism and
ends in a hail of bullets, which ends with the death of
one of the young women. Brookes
is invalided back to New Zealand to a pleasant surprise --
Titoki has been killed in an armed attack by the radicals
on Paremoremo Maximum Security Prison. Tharne's Quest Tharne has a mission on earth to combat an evil entity that is determined to wreck revenge on the human race. The adept has been able to delay the normal progression through the psychic spheres and has remained on earth within a physical body but retaining the powers of the occult. This is a dangerous combination that places the human race at risk of destruction. More importantly, it places Chad's space project in danger because the adept appears to be channeling his evil plans at the NASA computer developments. Chad is a disbeliever of occult powers so Tharne has to persuade him by taking him on an astral journey of the NASA complex -- in time to see one of adept's stooges trying to sabotage Chad's latest designs which are to be tested on a pending space flight. Unfortunately Chad is unable to stop him while he is in an astral state, so he is forced to watch while the stooge takes an essential piece of the computer and hands it over to the adept -- it is a fatal mistake. He has misinterpreted his Master's instructions and pays with his life. Chad is able to rectify the sabotage but not able to discover the target for the changes done to the computers. The adept is angry when the space flight computers don't carry out his instructions and launches a violent attack on those responsible. Tharne has been expecting this so has prepared psychic defenses for Chad -- these are sorely tested in a night of terror. The adept, a reincarnation of Adolph Hitler, needs human assistants to replace the stooge. He makes contact with a coven of Satanists and persuades them to help him with his plans. Tharne convinces Chad that he needs to infiltrate the coven so that he can work against the Satanists from an inside position. Chad is reluctant, but agrees to try. Meantime Alison falls into the coven's hands and becomes a slave at the Satanic Temple. Chad is accepted as a member of the
coven, meets the other members and goes through an
initiation ritual that makes him doubt his sanity and his
belief in Christianity. The
final conflict occurs at the Black Mass held to welcome
the Devil's Envoy, the dread Goat of Mendes, to earth.
Tharne's devas help with the mopping up after the mass is
disrupted and the adept is driven back into Hell with his
Master Satan. |
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