Richard Gray, The Piaculum Review

Overall Rating

The Piaculum
Richard Gray
iUniverse, 2003, $14.95, 207 pp.
ISBN: 0595303013

In a cave, two men find the remnants of a long dead civilization that left behind three "holy" books. One of them interpreted the message as God sent his son to save the human race. The other person insisted that the Words meant that the second coming of the Son needed saviors to sacrifice to atone for sins. Several millenniums after their hallowed excavation, mankind has evolved into two predominant cultures, of which both share in common beliefs in the Words of God stated in The Book of testaments. While the Mone share the sacred words amongst all members of their society, the Kathe insist only priests are capable of understanding the Words.

The Kathe seek those born with the white-mark so that the males can be converted into Piaculums and the females sacrificed during "The Week of Blood" as a means to ascend to heaven. The Kathe abduct Mone farmer Cearl because he has the white-mark. He offers little resistance hoping to keep his son protected from the grotesque alteration. Though he prays to the same God as his captors, Cearl has little faith that he will survive.

THE PIACULUM is an incredible futuristic tale that extrapolates interpretations of the lost Book of Testaments into cornerstones of two societies by concentrating on one member from each. The evolution is mindful of the clever archeological spin of the 1970s cult movie Fillard Millmore and Wells' Time Machine. Richard Gray sounds a warning that strict biblical interpretation is self centered to insure the priests are not Left Behind rather than sharing the Word so all can be saved.

Harriet Klausner