Azimuth: The First Journey

by Jack Sanger

A royal historian, Kamil, is called to the court of his emperor. He is commissioned to write the history of a famous man, a Magus, who lived many centuries before and whose thoughts and deeds influenced all the major religions and moral practices thereafter. The history is to help educate the willful teenage daughter of the emperor, Sabiya. He writes the history and proceeds to read it to her. As he does so he discovers that she is intelligent, provocative and manipulative. Not only that but she realises that this plump, middle aged man has a forensic brain and enlists his support in protecting her against her enemies, who would either kill her or find the means to disinherit her.

So Azimuth consists of two parallel stories like a double helix. The life adventures of the Magus represents one aspect of every chapter and the doings of the court and Kamil’s entwinement in the world of Sabiya, represents the other. The Magus’ story is told in separate adventures, chapter by chapter and each is prefigured in sequence by the esoteric major Arcana cards of the Tarot pack. They, mysteriously, give some inkling of what is to follow but they are cryptic and obscure. At the same time, wrapped round these adventures or tales, the story of the court with its intrigues, devilment, passions and bloody violence, maintains a tense narrative that frames the historian’s readings.

Book One: The First Journey, begins with the Magus’ extraordinary, almost magical, arrival in the world and follows his growing up and his discovery of his talents, his relationship with his ‘foster’ father and his questioning of everything around him including his heretical attitude to religions and their gods. Each of his 22 adventures is like a short story, yet is linked to the next. We see him grow, make mistakes, face great dangers, come upon worlds peopled by extraordinary three dimensional characters and display a maturity of thought far beyond his years. By the end of the book he is a powerful warrior of a man, a sage in the making and his impact upon the lives and cultures of those he has met is exceptional. Each story challenges the reader to think about aspects of life and death, of love and of belief but never intrusively.

While these stories unroll, Kamil gradually becomes embroiled in the machinations of the court and shows he is a dab hand at solving murder and unraveling a scheming plot against Princess Sabiya’s life. But will that be enough to save her?

300 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 14, 2012

About the author

Born in India to British parents. came to the UK after the war. Trained as a teacher. Taught for five years. Then a social worker. Then an academic, with M.A. and PhD, becoming a Professor of Management Research and international consultant. Worked/researched in over 20 countries inc. Uzbekistan, Russia, eastern Europe, western Europe, Canada, US.
All this time I wrote fiction privately. In the last decade I have turned to publishing my work, using my varied and challenging experience of cultures as a backdrop. My output is eclectic, under two names; Jack Sanger and Eric le Sange (for genre writing)
I write to challenge, entertain and influence.