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The Golden Child Trilogy #2
The Forest of Regrets
Sammy Mitsumi escapes from an abusive boarding school to find and kill the man who raped his mother, and to retrieve her magic talisman which contains the Golden Child. He flees to Brazil, where he is enslaved in a gold mine. Taking refuge among the wild Shama Indians, he learns the secrets of their ghost world, mastered by the forest people in their fight for survival. Sammy doesn’t want to kill, but the enemy is closing in, and the spirits of the dead leave him no choice. The Golden Child guides and protects him, but can he be trusted?
251 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 15, 2015
4 people are currently reading
9 people want to read
About the author
Cameron Macauley
10 books21 followersCameron Macauley has published short fiction in Prism International, The North American Review, The Sonora Review and Quick Fiction. After getting degrees in anthropology, psychology, and medical science, Cameron Macauley spent thirty years working in disaster relief and international health. During his career he has worked in a refugee camp in Thailand, a besieged city in Angola, a Yanomami Indian village in Brazil, and a mission hospital in Sumatra.
He teaches at James Madison University.
He has co-authored two novels with his father Robie Macauley: CITADEL OF ICE (2014), and THE ESCAPE OF ALFRED DREYFUS (2016), both from unpublished manuscripts found after Robie's death in 1995.
His short story collection is SIGHTSEEING IN HELL (2017).
Cameron is also the author of a supernatural adventure series, THE GOLDEN CHILD TRILOGY: THE TALISMAN CHILD (2014) and THE FOREST OF REGRETS (2015), and THE WARRIOR DEAD (2016). The complete trilogy is available in a single volume, UNBORN EVIL (2016).
He teaches at James Madison University.
He has co-authored two novels with his father Robie Macauley: CITADEL OF ICE (2014), and THE ESCAPE OF ALFRED DREYFUS (2016), both from unpublished manuscripts found after Robie's death in 1995.
His short story collection is SIGHTSEEING IN HELL (2017).
Cameron is also the author of a supernatural adventure series, THE GOLDEN CHILD TRILOGY: THE TALISMAN CHILD (2014) and THE FOREST OF REGRETS (2015), and THE WARRIOR DEAD (2016). The complete trilogy is available in a single volume, UNBORN EVIL (2016).
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 25, 2016
The story picks up from The Talisman Child, as Sammy Mitsumi is being kidnapped by his father, who has been absent from the family for many years. Sammy's dad is upset with his Cambodian mother, who is dealing with decades-old psychological trauma after living through the Cambodian Holocaust. He wants to put Sammy in a New Hampshire boarding school--the same one he went to as a boy--so that Sammy can learn some self-discipline.
The boarding school turns out to be a nightmarish prison where the older boys abuse the younger ones physically and psychologically. While plotting to escape, Sammy discovers that he can communicate with the dead, and manages to get them to help him. But his father hires a professional to locate Sammy and take him back to the school. Desperate to avoid this fate, Sammy kills the man and flees for his life, after retrieving his mother's talisman with its ghost, Koan, who can see into the future.
He ends up in Brazil, pretending to be a research assistant for an anthropologist studying the mysterious Shama Indians. But the tribe is being threatened by gold miners who want the land, and Sammy finds himself helping them defend their territory. The Shama have some serious supernatural help, and Sammy is drawn into a bizarre dream-world of spirits and demons.
Unlike the first book, in which the supernatural element is pretty subtle, this book is all about Sammy's interactions with a parallel universe populated by ghosts and Shama deities, who engage in their own battles and are just as mystified by the living as we are mystified by them. Sammy gradually learns some ways of controlling these spirits, but he is still learning when the book ends.
Whereas the first book explored Thavy's experiences pretending to be a man while in the army, in this book Sammy pretends to be an Indian so he will be accepted by this tribe which hates white foreigners.
The third book in the trilogy, The Warrior Dead, will complete the story, I assume, by bringing Sammy back together with his mother Thavy. The full trilogy in one volume can be found at Unborn Evil: The Complete Golden Child Trilogy.
The boarding school turns out to be a nightmarish prison where the older boys abuse the younger ones physically and psychologically. While plotting to escape, Sammy discovers that he can communicate with the dead, and manages to get them to help him. But his father hires a professional to locate Sammy and take him back to the school. Desperate to avoid this fate, Sammy kills the man and flees for his life, after retrieving his mother's talisman with its ghost, Koan, who can see into the future.
He ends up in Brazil, pretending to be a research assistant for an anthropologist studying the mysterious Shama Indians. But the tribe is being threatened by gold miners who want the land, and Sammy finds himself helping them defend their territory. The Shama have some serious supernatural help, and Sammy is drawn into a bizarre dream-world of spirits and demons.
Unlike the first book, in which the supernatural element is pretty subtle, this book is all about Sammy's interactions with a parallel universe populated by ghosts and Shama deities, who engage in their own battles and are just as mystified by the living as we are mystified by them. Sammy gradually learns some ways of controlling these spirits, but he is still learning when the book ends.
Whereas the first book explored Thavy's experiences pretending to be a man while in the army, in this book Sammy pretends to be an Indian so he will be accepted by this tribe which hates white foreigners.
The third book in the trilogy, The Warrior Dead, will complete the story, I assume, by bringing Sammy back together with his mother Thavy. The full trilogy in one volume can be found at Unborn Evil: The Complete Golden Child Trilogy.
Displaying 1 of 1 review