The Lost Scrolls of King Solomon / Richard Behrens

While a martial-arts discipline helps satisfy the yearnings cultivated in Stein as a youth, he is increasingly plagued by bizarre nightmares. His sensei encourages him to seek his roots--his boyhood religion in Israel.

Stein is immersed in a dangerous quest for relics hidden by King Solomon for the Messiah who would come at the end time. He is accompanied in this quest by a Jewish Rabbi and an Arab family.

Author Richard Behrens manages to work most of the standard quest motifs into this fast-paced tale. The artifact retrieved in the first outing is critical to successfully beginning the second. Riddles make appearances in several locations--one time in the form of a contest. One outing produces an artifact whose only purpose is to test Stein's resolve, and another produces nothing other than its impact on Stein's character. Like other authors who have depicted tours of Hell and Heaven (the obvious Dante, and the Niven and Pournelle version Inferno likely familiar to Behrens's readers), swipes are taken at contemporary figures along with men, women, and demons from ancient tales.

Throughout, Stein receives instruction from an array of otherwordly creatures. Their names are familiar to readers of sacred texts such as the Tanakh, the Christian Bible, and the Koran, but their characters prove to be rather different than fundamentalists of any stripe typically depicted. A lot of the fun is in seeing how that is made to fit with the received texts.

While any level of familiary with Kabbalah probably would help to understand the worldview informing this novel, it's not really necessary. Whether raised Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, you'll get enough of the references to get a bang out of this tale. Great literature? Not really, and it probably won't attract the sort of dedicated following that Robert Anton Wilson's efforts have, but it's a fun little romp through blasphemous territory. There's even an appendix at the back so you can try the breathing exercises used by the protagonist throughout the book to succeed in his quest.--Rebecca Allen
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