Ted Nolan wrote:
> Robert Carnegie wrote:
>> Ted Nolan wrote:
>>> Well, not a big haul this month, though I got mostly through another
>>> I could have featured, but will do next month.
>>>
>>> The usual disclosure: The links are Amazon affiliate links which
>>> could in theory earn me something if you bought something through
>>> one.
>>>
>>>
>>> ==
>>> Uncanny Collateral (Valkyrie Collections Book 1)
>>> by Brian McClellan
>>> https://amzn.to/3SMgI53
>>>
>>> Alek Fitz is a collections agent of a sort. If you sell your soul
>>> and then try to welsh on the deal, Alek is the one they send to do
>>> the extraction. He's not thrilled with the job, but as he's an
>>> actual slave (despite such being henceforward illegal) he doesn't
>>> have a lot of choice in the matter. It's a job with the occasional
>>> rough & tumble, so the bit of troll in his heritage comes in handy
>>> from time to time. There aren't many perks to his situation, but
>>> one of the few is getting to sort through magical artifacts left
>>> lying around a case's aftermath and ensuring that a select few get
>>> lost when he has to return the rest. That's how he acquired his
>>> best friend, a centuries old Jinn trapped in a ring he salvaged.
>>> Being a prisoner limits her power quite a bit, but still she is
>>> very handy to have around.
>>
>>Do people sell their souls to the traditional buyer,
>>the Devil, or are there other buyers? Asking for
>>a friend. :-) Also, being a magic Jinn trapped in
>
> You apparently can sell to Lucy (who is actually a pretty cool gal
> in this context) or other traditional buyers. I don't think there
> was a lot said other than the bought souls were going missing.
> There's some mumbo-jumbo about shades, souls & spirits that justifies
> the plot:
>
>
> Ferryman watched me for a few moments with those disconcerting
> eyes, then produced a lighter from his pocket and tapped
> it on the table. I wouldn't have imagined Death as a nervous
> smoker. He said, "Do you know the difference between a soul,
> a spirit, and a shade?"
>
> From the way he said the words, I assumed they were technical
> terms rather than nebulous ideas. "I know what a soul is.
> The others sound above my pay grade."
>
> "They are. Your spirit is the thing that exists before and
> after your time in this mortal realm. When you're born,
> it's split into two pieces--the soul and the shade. The
> soul comes with you into mortality. The shade remains here."
> He gestured to the darkness around him. "Part of my job as
> Ferryman is to reunite soul and shade and send the entire
> spirit off to wherever it's meant to go."
>
> All of this was news to me. I had wondered what goes on
> before and after death--I'm still human, after all. But the
> Other doesn't always make sense in human terms, so thinking
> about it too much is often a good route to a bad headache.
> "You're an administrator?"
>
> "I'd probably romanticize it a little more than that, but
> essentially, yes."
>
> I pursed my lips at the explanation, annoyed that he wouldn't
> give me a straight answer. "Then," I asked again, more
> emphatically, "why are you here?" In the back of my head,
> Maggie had gone quiet. From her ring, I could feel her
> presence like a person with their ear pressed against the
> door.
>
> "Because souls are missing."
>
> I watched him carefully, waiting for the and attached to
> the end of that sentence. Missing souls were my job, but I
> got the very clear sense from his cageyness that this wasn't
> the run-of-the-mill "old debtor took off running" kind of
> job. Something was up. If he didn't have my attention before,
> he definitely had it now.
>
> "From where?"
>
> "From the vaults of a number of your clients."
>
> I scoffed. "Is that possible?" As far as I had ever been
> aware, once Beelzebub or whoever got their claws onto your
> soul--sometimes with my help--that soul was theirs until
> further notice. It had never even occurred to me that they
> could be stolen.
>
> "It is possible," Ferryman answered, "and it has happened."
>
> "Is there an illicit trade in souls?"
>
> "There isn't. The souls literally don't have value in this
> life. Once they've been reunited with the shade and move
> on as part of the whole spirit, then they have value. The
> reason you have a job," he said, pointing one long finger
> at me, "is because the physical possession of a soul upon
> the death of the mortal vessel is extremely important in
> determining where the spirit winds up." Ferryman sighed,
> clearly getting tired of my line of questioning. "I'm here
> because most of your clients have been robbed. So many are
> affected, they've asked me to be their proxy. Is that
> satisfactory?"

_Uncanny Collateral_'s "shade" brings to mind IT's enigmatic "shadow"
nomenclature for matter aberrations on Wanderer.

"69 Death Awaits in Semispace"

The intelligence from Solitude! The being from Solitude,
the world on the alien time-plane, the being was capable of
separating its spirit from its body. Though intelligent, the
creature had been described by Reginald Bell as looking like
a sea cow. ...
"It's one of the oddest life-forms I've ever seen!"
someone said when Nathan had left, leaving behind only his
huge body which lay still on the control room floor.
"It isn't quite as odd as on first thought," Rhodan
answered. "The strange part is definitely the ability of
separating the spirit from the body. But that which so
strikingly reminds us of our childhood fear of ghosts surely
has a quite natural explanation."
The others looked at him expectantly.
"Of course," Rhodan continued, "the astral form is
immaterial. That which looks like a cloud to you is not at all
a gas, in case you thought so. The astral form itself is
nothing more than a field whose nature we know nothing about.
It is, in any case, a field with inherent intelligence. What
we see is the effect this field has on its surroundings. It
seems to give off energy that affects the refractive index of
the air around it. In that way it becomes visible to our eyes:
the area where the refractive index has been altered appears to
us as a cloud."
"The oddest aspect of it all, however, is the field's
ability to reflect nearby objects, even to the point of mimicking
them exactly. You have seen how Nathan took on my form and tried
to copy my face. I am convinced that he would develop his talent
into a perfect skill if he ever took enough time with it. Please
don't ask how shocked the Arkonide and I were when we first saw a
spirit-form on Solitude!"
The men were silent. The explanation had been illuminating
but the phenomenon was still impossible to grasp. They all
looked to where they suspected Nathan's spirit to be-out in the
darkness of space where there was nothing whose refractive index
Nathan could affect and become visible. ...
If anyone at all were able to reach Wanderer from here, it
would be Nathan. Not bodily but with the help of its astral form,
which not only could separate from its body but lead a most
independent existence. ...
Nathan looked back at the alien being lying far below in the
grass, unconscious with terror.
"It looks real, doesn't it?" said the stranger, amused. "Even
though it's only a shadow."
Nathan considered the concept of 'shadow'. It could not mean
the bodiless existence because the alien creature had been solid
and real. It, the ruler of this world, seemed to know of another
means of Spirit-Matter transformation.

PS. IT became a sinister character to me after "Blood of Cardif...
blood of Thora... blood of Rhodan."

Danke,

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