This is a gentle, mystical, tale about a young clergyman – the Reverend Patience Pontius – who does not really know his own mind. He should marry the girl who has been picked out for him and settle into a small living in the country. But something keeps calling to him. He should facilitate communications between the Spirit of the Sky and his parishioners. But something calling itself the Spirit of the Sea keeps getting in the way.
There is a literary genre called ‘cosy mystery’: I’m going to start a new genre for this book, and call it a ‘cosy quest’. There are elements of fantasy in it: the Reverend lives in a world we recognise (a sort of generic eighteenth century) but after he begins searching for the Spirit of the Sea he begins to weave in and out of a more imaginary landscape.
The reader follows the extremely naïve Reverend Pontius as he is persuaded to re-evaluate exactly which Spirit he should be serving. To do this he goes on a journey from anxious safety through terror and exhilaration to a sort of homecoming. The journey is never less than delightful. The adventures he has along the way are both funny and heart-wrenching by turn. His eventual destination is something we might all hope for. The takeaway of the tale is perhaps that no matter how diffident or uncertain we may be about the direction our lives should take, we can still make choices and be masters of our own destiny.
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Published by Judi Moore
Hi there,
I hope you find something to interest you here.
In December 2017 I published my fourth book – ‘Wonders will never cease’. It’s a satirical campus novel set in the fictional Ariel University in 1985. If you enjoyed Tom Sharpe’s Porterhouse novels, Willy Russell’s ‘Educating Rita’, David Lodge’s campus novels or Malcolm Bradbury’s ‘The History Man’ back in the day, you may enjoy revisiting the ivory towers of 1980s’ academe thirty years on. See what you think.
“It is December, 1985. The year is winding gently towards its close until Fergus Girvan, a Classicist at Ariel University, finds his research has been stolen by the man who is also seeking to steal his daughter. But which man is, actually, the more unscrupulous of the two? And is there hope for either of them?”
In the autumn of 2015 I published a volume of short fiction: 'Ice Cold Passion and other stories'. I am also the author of novella 'Little Mouse', a shortish piece of historical fiction which I published in 2014 and, a sequel to it, 'Is death really necessary?', my eco thriller set in the near future and which, confusingly, I published in 2009.
All the books are available from all good online bookshops and FeedARead on paper, and as e-books on Kindle.
On a semi-regular basis, and about a month after the event, I post here reviews which I do for Big Al & Pals, the premier reviewer of indie books, based in the States. My interests tend to thrillers, SF, magic realism and other quirky stuff.
On this blog are also posted the reviews I did for Leighton Buzzard Music Club over some five years up to the end of 2015. LBMC present annual seasons of eight monthly chamber music concerts at the Library Theatre in Leighton Buzzard, Bucks. They select young musicians just beginning to make their name - and the concerts are usually magnificent. I was very proud to be associated with them.
I review other music, books, theatre and exhibitions which I've particularly enjoyed.
BTW - it says the link to Facebook is broken. I dispute that. Click it and see, why not?
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Judi Moore 