"The Yahi Storyteller"

Lewis Foreman, a correspondent tells me, was part of the Chico High School graduating class of 1959. Now, in his eighth decade, he has written and illustrated a book of extraordinary tales that tell of ancient civilizations, galaxy traveling machines, and a perpetually sunlit garden world at earth's center.

And it begins with the story of a talented drummer whose stage name is Frosty. Years ago "he had left his home town of Chico, Ca., which had not satisfied his musical desires, and moved to the City." In San Francisco he finds "drugs and Rock and Roll" and later sets off to Reykjavik to explore his Viking heritage. What he finds is no less than the Reality behind all mythologies--and sword-and-sorcery adventures aplenty.

"The Yahi Storyteller" ($39.92 in paperback, self-published; also for Amazon Kindle) prefaces Frosty's own incredible journey with the long tale of Sky Hawk, part of the Acoma Anasazi, who "had wandered the southwest and had eventually entered California," coming to the land of the ancient Yana nation and the Yahi people.

Only a few Yahi survive the cattlemen's attacks (and Foreman's book does not look away from the grisly slaughters), but they do find hidden caves in which to live, and eventually Sky Hawk the storyteller is welcomed into the Yahi family.

"The Great Spirit is the manifested Father and Mother Creator," Sky Hawk tells the children, "and has been called by many names. The Navaho people call it the Holy Wind, the pale-skins call it the Holy Ghost."

Father and Mother Creator, neither male nor female, "are beyond creation." "They, together with the manifested Great Spirit, are the Creator. Three, yet all one. They are Power, Wisdom and Love." 

This back story sets the stage for Frosty's literal slide into the Viking era, where the drummer is renamed Sigmund Thorsson, summoned by the leader, Ice Wolf, to learn drums--and to explore a strange tunnel into the center of the earth wherein Centaurs, Sprites, Satyrs, Dragons and apes reside. 

The dark lords and their Fallen minions have arisen to enslave others, so the Viking exploration turns into a battle with cosmic consequences. 

Foreman's fertile imagination is wonderful to behold.

"Bull's Labyrinth"

Oregon writer Eric Witchey (ericwitchey.com), a presenter at the Butte College WordSpring writing conference, has a penchant for the offbeat. In "Bull's Labyrinth" ($17.95 in paperback from IFD Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle), he has fashioned a modern day romantic suspense fantasy out of the quest for missing glyphs of the ancient Minoan script called Linear-A. He pulls it off with aplomb, interweaving the story of the brilliant and stunningly beautiful Dr. Nikkis Aristos, 25 years old, with an ancient curse 3500 years old.

The Minoan civilization developed on the island of Crete; there, Nikkis is invited by a detective named Andros to aid in the search for artifact forgers. Andros is "the unfortunate son of Turkish and German parents" and is held in contempt by the locals because, he says, "they believe my ancestors murdered their ancestors. Which, to be candid, is true."

Andros lusts for Nikkis, who constantly fends off his demeaning advances. He takes her to the ruins of Knossos, where King Minos, called the "Bull Among Men," reigned more than three millennia ago. The Master Carver who built his palace is named Daedalus. Nikkis knows the name; Daedalus was "the father of crafts and tools. He built the bull that let the queen of the Minoans be mounted by the white bull, the gift of Poseidon, and hence gave birth to the Minotaur."

Alternating chapters return to Daedalus and the "real story," of how he and his son Ikarus tried to escape the island kingdom by flying away, and how Daedalus, returning when his son plummets to his death after flying too close to the sun, eventually marries a mysterious woman, a goat tender named--Nikkis. The King, jealous of Daedalus' craft, curses him to fall in love with Nikkis and then lose her in life after life; but the Queen, craving the erotic dimension of existence, makes it possible for the curse to be broken, for love to be consummated.

The worlds of archaic Daedalus and present-day Nikkis are drawn with compelling detail, and the action pulls the reader along as, Witchey notes, "the battle between ancient male and female energies" plays out on the page to its breathless conclusion.