What do you think?
Rate this book
The Way of Lucherium
In a war-torn land where the line between the spiritual and the material is blurred, an ambitious bard named Geoffrey falls out of favor with his powerful superiors and falls into a life of grace, freedom, and fulfillment when he joins the followers of an ancient Lord and embraces their paradoxical path of light and life.”
Geoffrey never expected to lose everything. He was a wildly popular bard, a dedicated subject of the great and prosperous nation of Trastaluche, and a fervent devotee to the Trastalucherian motto, Progress before all. But when a secret mission to root out a family of traitors goes horribly awry, and no one but Geoffrey is left alive, his history of loyalty no longer seems to matter. The Committees need someone to blame for such a disaster, and Geoffrey’s account -that an entire house disappeared before his eyes- is much too far-fetched to save him from being their scapegoat.
But losing everything isn’t always a total loss. At his lowest point, Geoffrey is rescued by a band of shadowy figures whose questionable actions and vague answers leave him both fascinated and terrified. When the leader of the band is revealed to be the very man whose house vanished in front of Geoffrey, the bard must decide between betraying his saviors to regain the favor of a dreadful Lord or rejecting his former allegiances and embracing the Way of a secret path at once mystical and grotesque that allows its followers to bridge the gap between the spiritual and material realms and to harness the fabric of existence itself. As Geoffrey struggles with the torrent of truths and choices that threaten to overwhelm him, he is certain of one either path will lead to suffering, but only one can grant Geoffrey true Light and true Life.
Intimate and epic, action-packed yet deeply contemplative, Christopher J. Rziha’s The Way of Lucherium presents a stunning parable of the soul that reimagines the moral complexities of redemption, friendship, progress, sacrifice, loyalty and grace by what if the realities of grace and sin, of angelic inspiration and demonic possession, of sacraments and cultures of death, were made explicitly visible in our bodies, souls, and relationships? Perfect for young adults and above who seek to immerse themselves in a rich new world of fantasy that illuminates the metaphysical undertones of everyday life, Rziha’s novel combines St. Augustine’s restless heart, J. R. R. Tolkien’s fascination with verse and lore, and The Wingfeather Saga’s emphasis on the transcendent calling of the ordinary person in a tale of subterfuge, conversion, and warfare.
“Crafted by a talented Christian academic and a Benedictine College alumnus, The Way of Lucherium offers a masterful depiction of superhuman grace at work in the ordinary tasks and extraordinary feats of life’s journey.” – Stephen D. Minnis, President, Benedictine College
“Before you is a gripping story, full of the drama of conversion, sin, grace, repentance, and forgiveness—with intense internal dialogue and struggle along the way, as well as moments of thrilling action.” – Dr. Andrew and Sarah Swafford, national speakers
“Being drawn into the world of Lucherium will plunge you deeper into the natural and supernatural truths of the world we share.” – Edward Mulholland, PhD, Sheridan Chair of Classics at Benedictine College
“In The Way of Lucherium, Christopher offers us a rich tale with great meaning.
Geoffrey never expected to lose everything. He was a wildly popular bard, a dedicated subject of the great and prosperous nation of Trastaluche, and a fervent devotee to the Trastalucherian motto, Progress before all. But when a secret mission to root out a family of traitors goes horribly awry, and no one but Geoffrey is left alive, his history of loyalty no longer seems to matter. The Committees need someone to blame for such a disaster, and Geoffrey’s account -that an entire house disappeared before his eyes- is much too far-fetched to save him from being their scapegoat.
But losing everything isn’t always a total loss. At his lowest point, Geoffrey is rescued by a band of shadowy figures whose questionable actions and vague answers leave him both fascinated and terrified. When the leader of the band is revealed to be the very man whose house vanished in front of Geoffrey, the bard must decide between betraying his saviors to regain the favor of a dreadful Lord or rejecting his former allegiances and embracing the Way of a secret path at once mystical and grotesque that allows its followers to bridge the gap between the spiritual and material realms and to harness the fabric of existence itself. As Geoffrey struggles with the torrent of truths and choices that threaten to overwhelm him, he is certain of one either path will lead to suffering, but only one can grant Geoffrey true Light and true Life.
Intimate and epic, action-packed yet deeply contemplative, Christopher J. Rziha’s The Way of Lucherium presents a stunning parable of the soul that reimagines the moral complexities of redemption, friendship, progress, sacrifice, loyalty and grace by what if the realities of grace and sin, of angelic inspiration and demonic possession, of sacraments and cultures of death, were made explicitly visible in our bodies, souls, and relationships? Perfect for young adults and above who seek to immerse themselves in a rich new world of fantasy that illuminates the metaphysical undertones of everyday life, Rziha’s novel combines St. Augustine’s restless heart, J. R. R. Tolkien’s fascination with verse and lore, and The Wingfeather Saga’s emphasis on the transcendent calling of the ordinary person in a tale of subterfuge, conversion, and warfare.
“Crafted by a talented Christian academic and a Benedictine College alumnus, The Way of Lucherium offers a masterful depiction of superhuman grace at work in the ordinary tasks and extraordinary feats of life’s journey.” – Stephen D. Minnis, President, Benedictine College
“Before you is a gripping story, full of the drama of conversion, sin, grace, repentance, and forgiveness—with intense internal dialogue and struggle along the way, as well as moments of thrilling action.” – Dr. Andrew and Sarah Swafford, national speakers
“Being drawn into the world of Lucherium will plunge you deeper into the natural and supernatural truths of the world we share.” – Edward Mulholland, PhD, Sheridan Chair of Classics at Benedictine College
“In The Way of Lucherium, Christopher offers us a rich tale with great meaning.
315 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 10, 2025
8 people are currently reading
12 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 20, 2025
A refreshing piece of fantasy literature (I am only slightly biased since I know the author). I enjoyed the Catholic roots of the story, and there were a couple moments where it felt like Tolkien's way of writing, particularly towards the end of the book.
July 15, 2025
Let’s suppose your memory wasn’t yours. Suppose it had been outsourced to committees. Suppose what you remembered as “truth” had been pre-filtered, sanctioned, and embedded in rhyme by government-employed bards.
Now suppose one of those bards woke up in the mud.
This is not the premise of a thriller. It’s the emotional and philosophical infrastructure of The Way of Lucherium, a book that reads less like a novel and more like a fugitive text that was never meant to be preserved. It feels like something you were meant to burn after reading—but will probably want to re-read instead.
In a world obsessed with "progress," Rziha gives us a protagonist whose arc is regression, decomposition, and then reconstitution. Geoffrey, a Committee bard, is undone not by rebellion or conspiracy but by witnessing something he cannot interpret: a state-sanctioned execution that doesn’t stay executed. The victim disappears. The house explodes. Geoffrey survives. But his mental software does not.
It’s hard to know what to call this story. A dystopian allegory? A metaphysical detective story? A bureaucratic ghost story? Whatever it is, it doesn't behave like a typical novel. There’s no “main quest.” There’s no chosen one. There’s no clear villain. But there is something that Rziha makes disturbingly tangible: the systemization of forgetting.
What the Committees fear most is not rebellion. It’s remembrance. Not history, but memory—the kind that lives in places that can’t be measured, like shared meals, trauma, hymns, dreams. The novel constructs an entire society designed to sterilize those spaces. In this world, even love must be licensed.
That’s why the resistance doesn’t rise with weapons. It cooks. It heals. It buries the dead. It sings outlawed poems. And it does all this in the ruins of forgotten wine cellars, inside cities that deny their own rot.
The genius of the book lies in its refusal to answer its own questions. Instead, it puts you in the position of the fallen bard—someone who once knew how to narrate the world, now left mute before its contradictions. That’s not confusion. That’s formation. That’s unlearning in the most honest sense.
You may finish the book and wonder what exactly happened. That’s okay. The plot isn’t what you’re supposed to carry. What you carry is a smell, a verse, an act of anonymous generosity—things that form a kind of moral memory stronger than any Committee archive.
So if you're looking for easy rebellion, this isn’t your book. If you're looking for a story that feels like having your cultural hard drive wiped while someone silently teaches you how to sing again—welcome to The Way of Lucherium.
Now suppose one of those bards woke up in the mud.
This is not the premise of a thriller. It’s the emotional and philosophical infrastructure of The Way of Lucherium, a book that reads less like a novel and more like a fugitive text that was never meant to be preserved. It feels like something you were meant to burn after reading—but will probably want to re-read instead.
In a world obsessed with "progress," Rziha gives us a protagonist whose arc is regression, decomposition, and then reconstitution. Geoffrey, a Committee bard, is undone not by rebellion or conspiracy but by witnessing something he cannot interpret: a state-sanctioned execution that doesn’t stay executed. The victim disappears. The house explodes. Geoffrey survives. But his mental software does not.
It’s hard to know what to call this story. A dystopian allegory? A metaphysical detective story? A bureaucratic ghost story? Whatever it is, it doesn't behave like a typical novel. There’s no “main quest.” There’s no chosen one. There’s no clear villain. But there is something that Rziha makes disturbingly tangible: the systemization of forgetting.
What the Committees fear most is not rebellion. It’s remembrance. Not history, but memory—the kind that lives in places that can’t be measured, like shared meals, trauma, hymns, dreams. The novel constructs an entire society designed to sterilize those spaces. In this world, even love must be licensed.
That’s why the resistance doesn’t rise with weapons. It cooks. It heals. It buries the dead. It sings outlawed poems. And it does all this in the ruins of forgotten wine cellars, inside cities that deny their own rot.
The genius of the book lies in its refusal to answer its own questions. Instead, it puts you in the position of the fallen bard—someone who once knew how to narrate the world, now left mute before its contradictions. That’s not confusion. That’s formation. That’s unlearning in the most honest sense.
You may finish the book and wonder what exactly happened. That’s okay. The plot isn’t what you’re supposed to carry. What you carry is a smell, a verse, an act of anonymous generosity—things that form a kind of moral memory stronger than any Committee archive.
So if you're looking for easy rebellion, this isn’t your book. If you're looking for a story that feels like having your cultural hard drive wiped while someone silently teaches you how to sing again—welcome to The Way of Lucherium.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews