cover image Journey into the Flame: Book One of the Rising World Trilogy

Journey into the Flame: Book One of the Rising World Trilogy

T.R. Williams. Atria, $16 trade paper (448p) ISBN 978-1-4767-1336-6

Lifeless prose hobbles Williams’s debut, the first in a near-future thriller trilogy. Art restorer Logan Cutler, a resident of New Chicago, Ill., decides to auction off his copy of The Chronicles of Satraya, one of the four original sets of a transformative text that has provided spiritual solace to the survivors of a cataclysmic series of natural disasters. When one of the bidders is murdered during the auction, Logan discovers that this crime is but one of a chain of outrages, all related to the Chronicles. As members of a shadowy cabal—descendants of the secret rulers of Earth—maneuver to stage a daring, bloody coup, Logan and his allies race to undercover old secrets of the first Council of Satraya; failure means mega-deaths and a world forever crushed by an oppressive oligarchy. While the weaponization of neuroscience lends interest, it doesn’t mesh well with magic and a muddled new age philosophy. (Jan.)