Book Title: Jamari and the Manhood Rites Trilogy
Author: R. Roderick Rowe
Publisher: RWCollins Publishing
Cover Artist: Farland Publishing
Genre: Fantasy Fiction, Epic Fantasy, Dystopian Fiction, Future Fiction
Tropes: Forbidden love, Magical Realism
Themes: Coming of age, Sexuality,
Heat Rating: 3 flames
This is the introduction to the world of Paradigm Lost, which currently includes this trilogy and also two Gay Erotica books.
The trilogy is a very long story divided into three parts.
BOOK 1
Title: Jamari and the Manhood Rites
Length: 211 pages
This book does not end on a cliffhanger.
Buy Links
Blurb
A forest paradise surrounded by lands gutted from corporate greed. The Elk Creek Tribe holds the hope for mankind’s future. One young man becomes paramount in bringing spirituality back into a desolate and hostile world. But first he must find himself.
Follow the life of a young man in the year 2115 as he decides to take on the challenge of the Manhood Rites. Journey with Jamari as he discovers his world, his community and his culture.
BOOK 2
Title: Jamari Shaman
Length: 242 pages
This book ends on a cliffhanger.
Buy Links
Blurb
A forest paradise surrounded by lands gutted from corporate greed. The Elk Creek Tribe holds the hope for mankind’s future. One young man becomes paramount in bringing spirituality back into a desolate and hostile world. But first he must find himself.
BOOK 3
Title: The Founder’s Sons
Length: 316 pages
This book does not end on a cliffhanger.
Buy Links
Blurb
A forest paradise surrounded by lands gutted from corporate greed. The Elk Creek Tribe holds the hope for mankind’s future. One young man becomes paramount in bringing spirituality back into a desolate and hostile world. But first he must find himself.
When Native American Mythology meets Celtic Druidism in a culture built around Gnostic Christianity, strange things come to life! Journey with Jamari as he discovers his world, his community and his culture.
Jamari works to understand a repeated spiritual vision as he also learns shamanism from the powerful Peter Shaman, 2nd Knight Shaman of the Elk Creek Tribe. He finds himself caught up in struggles, both physical and spiritual, as the world around him explodes in chaos and conquest.
In the world of 2115, nearly 100 years after the Pacific Rim erupted in a series of quakes, The Tribe remains the Pacific Northwest’s best hope of survival. Promoting peace, harmony, and the sharing of resources, The Tribe yet maintains a ferocious ability to defend itself from outsiders and wildlings. The Elk Creek Tribe, located near the town of Yoncalla, in Southwest Oregon, is the strongest civilization remaining in the region that has been long-abandoned by the mega-corps who decided that the sparse lands weren’t viable investments to rebuild roads and infrastructure to bring back into the fold.
The Tribe has defied all reason and logic, building a culture and a community that not just survives, but thrives, on the isolation, learning to live closer to the land, honoring the land and animals in return. Jamari has encountered spirit animals before, having earned two totems that have been recognized as his very own link to the Great Spirit. Over all, Eagle has visited him and marked him as His own.
He has to go on a frightening quest in order to satisfy a driving Vision. His friends, teachers and mentors guide him through this portion of his journey, building relationships that will span all time.
Jamari has been traveling Tribal Lands for two years in his quest to master the Manhood Rites and become a full citizen of the Elk Creek Tribe. It’s now 2117 and he’s getting his first views of the outer world. The outer world has been described as rapacious and vicious but, that information has not prepared him for what can happen when his world becomes the target of the Mega Corps who rule those other lands and governments. They’ve exhausted Oregon’s resources and now they’re setting eyes on the forest lands the Tribe has managed for over 100 years.
Along with threats and incursions from outside, Jamari is battling to understand why he disagrees with some major ethos of his own Tribe. His Shamanistic talents are growing and he’s becoming a reluctant legend within the Tribe. Hints of a top spot in Tribal Management and control are battling with growing internal unrest as he realizes just how big the changes the Tribe must make really are.
Can he earn the position that seems so readily his? Can he use it to make changes to better the Tribe? Can he gather the courage to let God fully enter into his corporeal body? What will he become if he does?
Background: Jamari is in the first stage of his Manhood Rites challenge, a morals and ethics challenge. The judge has just made and obscene proposition to help him get through and guarantee he’ll get the best posting. Jamari rejected the offer and took the judge into custody, thinking him to be an imposter. Until he was told that he WAS the judge who would decide his fate. The judge asks Jamari to tell the story of the lemming.
The lemming was a small rodent that lived in the tundra of Western Alaska and British Columbia. It burrowed into the ground for its nests and fed on the grasses and lichens of the far north. There once was a long-standing belief that lemmings would reach a certain population density and then commit a mass suicide by migrating west and jumping into the sea. Some thought they were following an ancient genetic program from the days when there was a land bridge between Alaska and Siberia. There was little doubt that these migrations occurred. There was also no doubt that many of the lemmings died in the migration.
There was doubt, though, of the motivation. Most people had developed their understanding of the ‘suicide’ urge as a result of viewing a documentary film that was purported to have been one such migration and the mass death of the lemmings. It was over forty years after the documentary was produced (and it had been viewed and believed by the majority of citizens on the North American continent many times over those four decades) before evidence came out that the producers of that documentary had paid some Eskimo children to capture several dozen lemmings from an arctic plain. They had then transported these captive lemmings to an area in British Columbia, which had absolutely no access to the Arctic Ocean, and filmed the little rodents falling over a cliff into water far below. The crux of the story was that the filmmakers were pushing them over the cliff and had a camera suspended on a line down below, giving the appearance of the migration of lemmings resulting in mass suicide.
During that forty-year time frame, dictionaries began to use the term “Lemming” to describe a member of society with no originality or voice of his own: one who spoke or repeated only what he had been told, or one who blindly followed the crowd without thinking about what the actions of the crowd might mean to that person as a separate individual.
Once the myth was debunked, the truth still remained that when lemmings reached an untenable population density, many of the individuals in that colony would take off in a mass migration. During this migration, they would find obstacles in their path; these obstacles—whether streams, rivers, cliffs, or predators—would take the lives of many of the individuals.
“Now tell me what the story means,” the judge ordered.
Jamari was flabbergasted, nearly speechless, as unordered thoughts ran randomly through his mind. And then inspiration struck. With today’s events, specifically his ‘interactions’ with the judge.
“Sir, leaving aside the totally made-up legend of the ground-burrowing rodent, the lemming from the dictionary (a person who follows the crowd or the easiest path without thought of the consequences) would seem to be the focus here. If I had been lemming-like, I would have gone along with your sexual overture, not caring about the potential meanings or repercussions, just as the simplest path offered to get ‘in front of the judge.’ What the story really means is that when too many members of a society fall into that trap, the easiest path forward, the society itself is certain to fall.”
The judge smiled. “You’ll do, young Jamari. You’ll do. There are other candidates I have to deal with, so why don’t you have Shane walk you through the processing down here and then up to Elk Creek Hall. That’s where I’m assigning you for the completion of your Rites.”
Roderick Rowe studied writing in college for several years, working as assistant editor and then editor for his school’s literary magazine. He also spent a term as copy editor for the campus newspaper. He is a gay man and uses this “affliction” to build characters and situations in his fictional work. Rowe has published several short stories and an occasional poem. After ending a twenty-year career unexpectedly in 2015, Rowe decided to write his first novel. “Jamari and the Manhood Rites, Part I” was completed in two months, then he settled in to conduct editing – complete new landscape design with a new Koi pond, a new library built into the spare room in his home, the cleanest his house had ever been – but the editing eventually got completed.
Social Media Links
Blog/Website | Facebook | Twitter |
Instagram | Tumblr | TikTok | Goodreads
When I was asked to provide a snippet of my story, I couldn’t think what to submit without cutting its meaning down to fit “snippet” size. I sent what I thought would be a valuable piece of Jamari’s puzzle, but still wondered if it could be understood for its place in the whole. I shouldn’t have worried, the blogger went into the book itself and dug out salient details that brought that snippet to life! What a wonderful tour of the Paradigm Lost Trilogy!