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Doctor Orient #1
Doctor Orient
THE SPELLBINDING NOVEL OF A PSYCHIC WAR
FOR THE SOUL OF A YOUNG GIRL
+ A coven of witches and warlocks—among them some of New York’s most prominent celebrities—toying with sexual perversion, Black Magic and human sacrifice…
+ A hot downtown discotheque where an incredibly beautiful sixteen-year-old seduces young men into the service of Satan…
+ A defrocked priest whose consuming ambition and awesome occult powers
make him famous enough to lure a capacity crowd to Yankee Stadium to witness a dark “miracle”—the cure of the Vice-President’s daughter…
Doctor Owen Orient, psychiatrist, physician, psychic adept—and his team of Telepaths—stake their lives against the ravening evil known as… Susej.
The book that launched the DOCTOR ORIENT series.
Series titles from E-Reads DOCTOR ORIENT (#1), RAGA SIX (#2), LADY SATIVA (#3).
FOR THE SOUL OF A YOUNG GIRL
+ A coven of witches and warlocks—among them some of New York’s most prominent celebrities—toying with sexual perversion, Black Magic and human sacrifice…
+ A hot downtown discotheque where an incredibly beautiful sixteen-year-old seduces young men into the service of Satan…
+ A defrocked priest whose consuming ambition and awesome occult powers
make him famous enough to lure a capacity crowd to Yankee Stadium to witness a dark “miracle”—the cure of the Vice-President’s daughter…
Doctor Owen Orient, psychiatrist, physician, psychic adept—and his team of Telepaths—stake their lives against the ravening evil known as… Susej.
The book that launched the DOCTOR ORIENT series.
Series titles from E-Reads DOCTOR ORIENT (#1), RAGA SIX (#2), LADY SATIVA (#3).
220 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 1, 1970
26 people are currently reading
148 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 25, 2014
I liked it for the spirit intended behind the concept. Doctor Orient is basically a pulp hero of the 30's updated for the 70's. Think Doc Savage, only instead of using nifty gadgets to battle mad geniuses looking to rule the world, he's using ESP and astral projection to battle kinky satanists.
May 1, 2013
Without a doubt this is a product of its time. It screams 1970 like nobody's business. It really embraces all the fantastic neo-mysticism that started popping up, hitting all the big targets: astral projection/plane, positive and negative energy, telepathy, hypnosis, parallel universes, psychic battles, Tibetan gods, and of course devil worship. It plays out like Doctor Strange done by Hammer Films. The premise is perfect: a psychic aesthete assembles a ragtag crew to fight an evil mastermind (a bishop, a telepathic dentist, an actor action star, an italian manservant with powers, and an out of work alcoholic baseball player). It is totally self indulgent and loves to explore the psyched out world of the mind. Because so much action takes place on another plane (other than ritualistic orgies, of course) I felt that he missed out on being able to use many of his characters. The main character is motivated to bide his time and it takes a while before the author is forced to put a character into real action. For the most part all of the crew spent their time hiding out, watching TV, and playing chess. Weird.
The author clearly has a thing for young ladies. It is super awkward when he introduces a 16 year old girl into the picture. She's written with the perception and mindset of someone in her 20s, she is savvy to a number of things that no 16 year old would likely know or care about (what 16 year old knows Nevelson, Marisol, Giacometti, Samaras and Calder sculptures or Gill and Linder Paintings) and the author uses lines like "for the first time in years, she felt truly alive", or referring to how she is finally coming around to love again after all these years. What years could she possibly have? Seriously, this guy has never met a 16 year old. It is some bizarre fantasy of his.
Still, all in all a quite enjoyable read. Lots of fun concepts, good imagery, and a classically entertaining premise.
The author clearly has a thing for young ladies. It is super awkward when he introduces a 16 year old girl into the picture. She's written with the perception and mindset of someone in her 20s, she is savvy to a number of things that no 16 year old would likely know or care about (what 16 year old knows Nevelson, Marisol, Giacometti, Samaras and Calder sculptures or Gill and Linder Paintings) and the author uses lines like "for the first time in years, she felt truly alive", or referring to how she is finally coming around to love again after all these years. What years could she possibly have? Seriously, this guy has never met a 16 year old. It is some bizarre fantasy of his.
Still, all in all a quite enjoyable read. Lots of fun concepts, good imagery, and a classically entertaining premise.
November 10, 2017
It’s a lot like Doctor Strange, if Doctor Strange busted up Satanic sex cults run by the anti-Christ by invoking angels with his superhero team of psychic yogis.
June 10, 2024
First in a series from the Seventies. Doctor Orient is on a mission to teach humans to use their latent telepathy. But he has to battle a Satanic priest to free the possessed soul of a young woman who may be his reincarnated love. I liked that Orient had little idea of what he was doing half the time. His indecisiveness and dangerous missteps work better than having him be some near-perfect mage. His disciples are similarly flawed. I will be reading the rest of the series.
P.S. Orient casts an I Ching hexagram using three pennies. As far as I can tell, he misinterprets the first cast to get a solid line where it ought to be broken, giving him Fu when he ought to've gotten Khwan. Bizarrely enough, Khwan works in the story just as well as Fu. The I Ching was in the air at the time this book was being written, as it appeared as a plot device on Dark Shadows in 1969 (beginning with episode 700).
P.S. Orient casts an I Ching hexagram using three pennies. As far as I can tell, he misinterprets the first cast to get a solid line where it ought to be broken, giving him Fu when he ought to've gotten Khwan. Bizarrely enough, Khwan works in the story just as well as Fu. The I Ching was in the air at the time this book was being written, as it appeared as a plot device on Dark Shadows in 1969 (beginning with episode 700).
August 25, 2014
Occult detectives have been around since the 1850s, and have continued into the modern era with the likes of Kolchak the Night Stalker and the X-Files. Doctor Orient is in the subcategory that a lot of early Doctor Strange comics are in - the occult detective that doesn't leave the house.
Occult has a posse, mostly students developing psychic abilities. There's Claude Levi, dentist and hypnotist; Argyle Simpson, actor and adventurer; Hap Prentice, baseball player and mindreader; the open minded Catholic Bishop Redson, and sassy secretary Sordi.
They're up against Susej, a pseudo-Satanic cult leader and former priest who serves the Clear One. Susej increases his power through human sacrifice and the devotion of talk show viewers that witness his miraculous healing powers.
Most of the action takes place in some incorporeal form. Dreams, visions, the astral plane, or some other metaphoric space. Simpson has the decency to leave the house and get captured, the most anyone does in the whole book. The rest is all fasting, meditation, and watching TV. Lots of TV.
Everything is tossed into the mix here. Psychic powers, astral travel, I Ching, exorcism, voodoo, reincarnation, even poltergeists. It all has a very 70s charm to it all, I just wish they'd leave the house more.
More reviews at Trash Menace
Occult has a posse, mostly students developing psychic abilities. There's Claude Levi, dentist and hypnotist; Argyle Simpson, actor and adventurer; Hap Prentice, baseball player and mindreader; the open minded Catholic Bishop Redson, and sassy secretary Sordi.
They're up against Susej, a pseudo-Satanic cult leader and former priest who serves the Clear One. Susej increases his power through human sacrifice and the devotion of talk show viewers that witness his miraculous healing powers.
Most of the action takes place in some incorporeal form. Dreams, visions, the astral plane, or some other metaphoric space. Simpson has the decency to leave the house and get captured, the most anyone does in the whole book. The rest is all fasting, meditation, and watching TV. Lots of TV.
Everything is tossed into the mix here. Psychic powers, astral travel, I Ching, exorcism, voodoo, reincarnation, even poltergeists. It all has a very 70s charm to it all, I just wish they'd leave the house more.
More reviews at Trash Menace
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 1, 2024
A 1970 occult thriller featuring Dr. Owen Orient, a psychiatrist, physician, and psychic adept, and his motley team of telepaths. They attempt to thwart a satanic sex cult led by an evil genius named Susej (“Jesus" spelled backwards) who plans to use pop music for mind control.
Orient has been described as "Indiana Jones meets Alan Watts." Many reviewers see similarities to Doctor Strange, the Marvel comic book hero. The book mixes eastern mysticism, hard-boiled detective tropes, and sleazy sex (including statutory rape). Orient's motley crew is entertaining, but the characterization is thin and the plot is silly.
This book serves as the clumsy start to an eight book series that presumably improved with subsequent novels. The enormous success of The Exorcist a year later piqued people's interest in the occult and created a huge market for this sort of hokum.
Orient has been described as "Indiana Jones meets Alan Watts." Many reviewers see similarities to Doctor Strange, the Marvel comic book hero. The book mixes eastern mysticism, hard-boiled detective tropes, and sleazy sex (including statutory rape). Orient's motley crew is entertaining, but the characterization is thin and the plot is silly.
This book serves as the clumsy start to an eight book series that presumably improved with subsequent novels. The enormous success of The Exorcist a year later piqued people's interest in the occult and created a huge market for this sort of hokum.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews