Ai: Opening by George St. Georges is a wonderful combination of a history lesson woven seamlessly around a psychological thriller/mystery. The island of Ai is the home of a famous university and theological college. Walt Wallis is a college senior who is fascinated by words, aspires to be a well-known writer, and loves exploring historical documents for the exact meaning of the language used and any underlying messages. What Walt, his roommate Dean, and his fellow friends and classmates don’t realize is that a mysterious and secretive cult has been choreographing everything happening on the island and elsewhere for millennia.
Strong occult forces involving the kidnapping, sexual abuse, and human sacrifice of thousands of children from all around the world have been used to create the power this mysterious cabal has wielded. Walt discovers through his analysis of the King James Version of the Bible, the Talmud, the Torah, and mysterious dreams that something is amiss on the island of Ai. They are determined to reveal and overthrow this vile cabal.
When I read the synopsis and opening pages of Ai: Opening, I began to wonder if this was going to be a dry analysis of historical biblical texts. I couldn’t have been more wrong; this is an edge-of-the-seat thriller that also delivers a surprisingly deep and fascinating look at language as it applies to historical documents, especially religious texts. Author George St. Georges is an expert at balancing the excitement, horror, and tension of a taut occult thriller with the rigorous academic debate of language and semantics in religious texts. Although not at all biblical in my outlook, I am a keen devotee of both language and history and found the discussions on these subjects enlightening, thought- provoking, and, at times, intensely challenging. Given the conspiracy theory accusations of child exploitation and secret cabals that have surfaced in modern-day society, I found this story riveting and timely. What impressed me was the idea that such things not only could but did happen to so many children. When we read statistics of trafficked, abused, and tortured children, we often tend to tut-tut and assure ourselves that this happens elsewhere but it could never happen in my country, my state, my town, or my family. This book sharply reminds us that the person sitting next to us could be an abused child who appears normal but has buried that unspeakable abuse deep in his or her psyche and that one day it may come to the fore with potentially horrific consequences. I also appreciated the rigorous academic debate over previously ignored or glossed-over passages in religious texts that formed the basis of so many people’s morality and lifestyles. It reminds us that language is fluid and it is easy for two people to read the same text and still come to different interpretations. This is a thinking reader’s book and one of the best I’ve read in a long time. I highly recommend this read.
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