Azimuth: The Second 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 Two: The Second Journey, has 22 more tales, headed by the same sequence of Tarot cards. This is the middle stage of the Magus’ life and encompasses what he became famed for. He is more of a sage, has crystallized some of his thinking about the nature of existence but is faced by the likelihood of a terrible war which will lay waste to the populations of east and west. His journey to resolve this awful, impending conflict is again broken into separate adventures, linked and then fused as the book reaches its tense conclusion. All the while the Tarot cards display more and more influence on events both within the tales and outside them. And Kamil’s readings of the tales help to influence Sabiya’s desperate fight to save her prospective empire.

As in Book One, Kamil’s life and power within the court slowly grows. Princess Sabiya is now a young woman. She is to become empress one day and is much sought after. There arrives in the court a strange, malevolent Rasputin of a creature called The Red Man who seems bent on the court’s destruction, as well as sullying Sabiya’s physical and emotional world. Kamil may be her only defence against the man’s hypnotic, rapacious powers. All the while, Kamil’s own life undergoes change, much of it orchestrated by Sabiya, herself, who has taken an interest in changing him from a ‘dry old historian’ into a social, attractive man of the court.
For much more about the book go to:
http://azimuthtrilogy.com

300 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 16, 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.