A new summer is around the corner

The birds were chirping.
The sun cast a bleak ray inside the cold, large mansion.
The lady of the house sat on the rocking chair, cradling a photo album. She wore rounded spectacles on her already ovoid face. Long strands of hair fell on both sides, curling at the very end. She had amicable features; large, circular kind eyes with brown iris, and a nondescript nose. Her lips were thin and even the slightest hint of a smile revealed her glossy white set of teeth. The menacing dimness of her surroundings were a vibrant contrast to her pale skin and white dress. She looked, for want of a better phrase, like a kindly ghost, sitting alone in that chair. She was looking outside the window now, at a tree; thinking about something intently, when the loud footsteps from above brought her shuddering back to reality.
“Aldous” a low pitched voice beckoned.
“Yes, master” an adenoidal voice replied and out of one of the many corridors, a butler appeared; hunch-backed and apologetic.
The owner of the deep voice, who was the master of the house, descended from the stairs to the floor. He was a man of bulky stature, like giants in myths. He looked positively intimidating. The magnificent curls of his moustache and his sculptured facial features made him look cruelly handsome. The stray strand of hair flitting on his forehead was just a touché. He walked up to his wife, kissed her lightly, and then addressed the butler again.
“I won’t be back till late, Aldous. Don’t hold off your Lady’s lunch or dinner because of me.”
He wrapped the regal green overcoat tightly around himself, as a barrier against the cold, and was making his way out when his wife stopped him.
“Benedict.”
He pirouetted gracefully:
“Laura, darling.”
“Where are you going, love?”
Her voice was so soft and peaceful, but the pace at which she delivered her words was fast, too fast. It lent a sharp jab to her sentences. Like a playful mockery.
“I’ve to meet the vicar”
She looked outside the window at the tree, and smiled, which almost turned into a grin.
“So early in the day?”
He shrugged.
“I’ve quite a few issues to discuss with him”
“Pray, lose that coat. Winters gone. You’ll get blisters.”
Benedict cringed at this comment and off-handedly remarked:
“No honey, winter is not gone, rather it’s coming.”
“Oh” her eyes narrowed. Then she sighed, and continued looking at the photographs.
“Well I’ll be going then”
She didn’t respond. She was too busy looking at the beautiful boy in the picture.
Benedict nodded absently and left the mansion, shutting the door with a thud.
Tears welled up in her eyes as she continued looking at the photographs and reading the captions on their backside.
Their wonderful child, dead at the mere age of 10. Today was his first death anniversary: it would be exactly one year since the horrible fire took him away. She’d herself sustained a head injury. But it was inconsequential.
Did Benedict even remember the date of his death? Probably not.
He was too busy shagging that harlot.
Cheater
Going to the vicar
Telling her it wasn’t summer, but winter
Liar.
She gritted her teeth, and her brows furrowed. She hadn’t wanted to think this way. But then she’d smelled the feminine fragrance on his clothes. She found this fact incredulous albeit oddly believable. He was cheating on her.
She started playing with her hair, and wondering what went wrong in their marriage. What did she not have that the other woman had? She was the daughter of a duke, of royal blood, and who was she? Just a simple commoner. What had she not given him? She had abandoned her education and her ambitions. Everything because of him. And this is how he had repaid him. By being disloyal. By not even gracing her with his presence today, out of all days.
The other woman must be real pretty. Or maybe just really good at her “art”.
She looked around, and then made up her mind.
“Aldous”
Like a djinn, the butler blinked back into the large room where Laura sat.
“Yes, my lady”
“Go to your quarters. Send every servant and help away too. Leave me be.”
The butler tilted his head and grimaced.
“As you say”
He started shuffling out of the room, and then while extinguishing the fire out of the fireplace, turned back to say:
“Should I give you, your medicine, right now, Madam?”
She got up from the chair, with the intention of retrieving a knife to kill her husband.
“No, Aldous. Not today.”


Late in the night, Laura still sat on the rocking chair. The moonlight was lighting her face up; aggrandising her gorgeousness. She still had the album open. She heard the gates open outside. The rattling of the iron bars audible over the quiet of the night. Benedict’s heavy steps were distinct and definite. Laura heard him fumble for the keys. He gasped as he realised the door wasn’t locked. He walked into the room.
He saw Laura. Not exactly surprised. His guilt didn’t need to register, he realised. The drunkenness was plastered all over his face.
“Laura, my darling.”
“Excuse me.” There was finality in her voice. And a strangeness that Benedict immediately understood. He rushed towards her, and grabbed her by the arm.
“Tell me, where are your pills?”
Laura looked at him confused.
“What are you saying? And how did you come in?”
Benedict stepped back and stared in horror. She had forgotten. It might be too late now.
“Why are you staring at me like that? Who are you?”
Benedict broke down.
He embraced his wife tightly, sobbing on her shoulders. His breath smelled reeked of alcohol. He wailed loud into the night, unleashing all his grief and sorrow. He didn’t want to cry in front of her and make her condition worse. He had tried to drown all his misery through alcohol, alone in the pub. But it all amounted to nothing as his hysteric crying worsened.
Laura tried pushing the man away, who had her in his strong grip. Her head ached. Fortunately for her, she saw a knife close by, and without much thought, pushed it into the mans back.
Benedict let loose a muffled cry.
And then landed on the floor with a thud.

She sat beneath the tree, as a new dawn emerged. The sun lit up her blood stained face. She leaned against the shovel, her bare feet on the freshly dug mound of dirt. She tucked her hair behind her ears; trying to piece together the events of last night.
She had killed someone and her head ached.
Something small and hard plopped on her head and dropped on the grass beside her.
A berry.
She looked up.
The branches of the tree looked healthy. The yellow berries dangling off of the boughs looked edible.
They were ripe. The new season was ushering in its own blessings.
As farmers around the country prepared their crops for winter, poor demented Laura whispered to her dead husbands grave and herself:
“A new summer is around the corner.”

Sheikh Zayed Campus Diaries

Campus Diary

Miss Chiffon

The gale of fresh air greeted him zealously as he rushed out of his stuffy room. Everything inside there was miserable and in ruin. His writing paraphernalia was emblematic for despair and his personal belongings all huddled in the corner he liked to call his bedroom were a pathetic sight. This was the third week and he still hadn’t gone beyond the first chapter. If he didn’t want to starve and be homeless, he had to write. That’s all they asked for. And there was nothing wrong in that. Isn’t that what he had always wanted to do? To read and write without interruption. But now that he had this autonomy he found it crippling and sometimes even dreary. Oh god! And what did he have to write. He still had no clue what his novel was going to be about. He just had a vague idea about the plot which was basically a bastard amalgam of everything he’d ever liked in mystery novels.

He took a deep breath, glad that he had come out to rejuvenate himself. He stood on the pathway idly looking at the pedestrians. Now and then a motor would go on the otherwise quiet road. Those infernal mechanical beasts! What a filthy spawn of science; constantly corrupting the nature with their acrid fumes. God help us, he thought. Only God can deliver us safely through our own scheduled destruction. He heard a motor car coming from a distance. Bah! Another one. He narrowed his eyes and saw a red car moving swiftly in his direction. The car, even he had to agree was beautiful. Its metallic red glare shouted against the quiet dullness of the region. But perhaps what fascinated him more than the car was its driver. For it was a woman! Of course such a thing wasn’t unheard of. One learnt of these things in pubs and clubs. They’re always narrated as tales from far-fetched land, too strange to occur in the close vicinity. Yet here she was, driving a red motor car.

He found himself looking very carefully at the car and the driver. He wanted to make out more details. What sort of a woman was this? Where was she going? What gave her the courage to do this? His inquiries were left unanswered as the woman and the car whizzed past him down the road. All he saw was a green flurry, perhaps her scarf and then nothing. Sullen and dejected, for he had failed in his petty adventure, he made his way back to the room. He still had to write. But before going in, he made a mental note to come outside the next day too at the same time. Maybe she would come back from wherever she was going through the same route.

She wasn’t there the next day. Or the day after that. Or even the day after that. By this point, he had become curious to a greater degree, who was this woman? Where did she disappear to? He thought of asking around, maybe somebody else had seen her. But then he realized how stupid that would sound. And thus like an idiotic druid, he made it his habit to come out daily at the same time to get some fresh air and maybe even incidentally see her. His solemn efforts were rewarded. It was just another day when he saw the red beast in the distance again. He didn’t look at who was in the driver seat. He knew it would be her. Whoever she was. He tried making out the details of her face and to some extent he did.

She wore glasses. And she had a cute angular face. The effect of her sharp nose was dampened by the softness of her eyes. Her dark brown eyes. Such a common color but then why did they look so dreamy on her. Her lips were pursed. But even then one could see her shapely lips. They looked so soft and full. He felt an immediate urge to lift her chin and kiss her passionately on the lips. However, his fantasy was pulverized as she mercilessly went ahead.

Now it became a pilgrimage. Daily, he would go outside his rooms at the same time, in the hopes to see her. He would comb his oily hair and wash his murky face. He tried to compose poetry for her and not to his surprise failed. He found himself imagining dialogues and possible scenarios with her at night. His sleep vanished and the poise of his days was vanquished. He became a restless soul, waiting every day for the moment when he would catch the singular glance of her and which too he sometimes failed to do. For the women didn’t traverse this road daily. The days she skipped were days of gloom and sadness. The days she passed were days of jubilation and joy. He found his time and his activities revolving around those few moments. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t gone beyond the second chapter and the deadline was too close. The shoddy apartment was merely an inconvenience now. The fact that motor cars were destroying the environment also didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was her. And the few sacred moments in which he saw his glamorous angel riding the red demonic device of hell. Oh the contradictions! She excited him. She was his amusement. She was his secret. His little comfort zone in the vast universe that he didn’t want to share with anyone. By now he had noticed a few more details. Such as her car was faster than most other cars. She had a cleft chin like his favorite singer and this particular oddity exponentially increased her prettiness. It gave her face a symmetry. Once he thought he saw her smiling or maybe she was grinning. It was such a complete smile. The whole of her face seemed to be in sync to this jolly exhibition of the curving of the corners of her mouth. The dimples in her soft round cheeks. Exquisite. Also he had noticed that she always wore a scarf, of perhaps the same material, sometimes just around her neck and at other times over her head too. It gave her appearance a finesse that he couldn’t quite describe. It made her look even more charming.

One day while waiting for her on the footpath, he saw a piece of cloth in a fabric shop across the road. He darted towards it and to the vexation of the shopkeeper started caressing it with his grubby hands. The shopkeeper allowed this perversion to go on for a few seconds but then he had enough and asked him politely to get out. And got out he did, only after he had asked him the name of the material.

“Chiffon, my good-man! It’s the fabric of the wealthy! Now get your bloody arse out of here before I call the coppers.”

And since that day she had become Miss Chiffon.

She was his Miss Chiffon. He would dream about her. As the date of the deadline approached his fervor also exacerbated. He mused over his curse. For that was how he saw it now. She was his lovely curse. The entity he couldn’t behold because he wasn’t worthy of it. What made it more bitter was the fact that he could never be worthy of her. She was from a higher plane. And how could he even claim that he was mad about her? Wasn’t she just a concept of his mind? An anchor that his mind had established before it could’ve flung itself apart? She existed, that was a fact. He couldn’t ignore that, and he couldn’t have imagined something so marvelous. But did she really look like that? Were her eyes really so enveloping and all seeing? Was her skin really so pale and soft? Or was this all his imagination? It really was hard to see details of someone going so fast no matter how hard one tried. So did he love (for want of a better word) her? Or did he love the concept of her that he had built and which was corroborated by some involuntary gestures from her? Maybe she was better than most people. Maybe she didn’t believe in love, like most sensible people don’t. It is after all just a perturbation of soul. It has no meaning and its true value is so confused that it’s hopeless to find it anymore. Maybe that’s what she thought. Maybe she was a better human and didn’t dabble in the sensual arts. His thoughts took on a deeper meaning as he continued down this train of thoughts. Before he knew she was much more than just a human to him. She was his temple. An ethereal being who had shunned the pettiest of vice and ignored the most poking sound. Love. She didn’t believe in love and he loved her just for that. He adored her.

He remembered that people would say how time was going fast than it actually was or how it was passing slowly. It didn’t make sense back then. It did now. Complete days seemed to be agonizingly slow, like they were stretched into years. And the moments when he could espy her on the horizon always seemed too short. Perhaps even shorter than the blink of an eye. Nevertheless, time passed as it should, and unknown to him, the day of deadline came upon him. His frenzy had rendered him useless for anything by this point. He only ate and underwent the requiem of survival so he could live and perhaps catch a glimpse of her. There was no point in being ambitious, she was a queen and he was no one. He couldn’t catch up to her. Some minuscule corner of his chaotic mind had albeit a fancy of its own. It harbored like a malignant tumor, the urge to touch her. To meet her. He didn’t care now that there was a big chance his expectations would be shattered by reality. It would be worthwhile regardless of the long-term consequence. This carnal desire coupled with his savage impulse to lay claim on what he liked, took a deep hold in him that day. The day of the deadline. The day he was supposed to submit the first draft of his novel. Of which he had written only three chapters. The third one being absolute gibberish; the ravings of a mad man.

But he was blissfully ignorant of the impending doom. He casually stood waiting for her. He expected to see her today. It was high time. He heard the familiar sound of the motor engine. Presently he saw the glistening red car emerge on the other side of the road. She wore an indigo colored scarf today. It accentuated the paleness of her skin. The car zoomed towards its normal direction expecting no obstruction as usual. But it did face an obstruction today. The woman in the car, had her chiffon scarf tightly wrapped around her head for it was ignominiously cold. This was a normal drive. She was used to of driving down this road to go see her beautician now. So it wasn’t going to harm anyone if she let her attention falter for a moment. But that’s all it took. A moment. A moment to think, override his instincts and jump in front of the roaring car. She only saw a blur approaching the car and then a loud thud. Immediately she stopped the car, breathing deeply. She had hit something or worse someone. Slowly and mechanically she came out of the car. People had started to gather around now. The undulating sway of her gait gave her movements and motions the grace of a ballet dancer. She paused, shocked by horror. In front of her, bleeding to his death was a homeless bum, for that’s what he looked like. Of course such sort of people died everyday but one read this in the newspapers or heard it as anecdotes in ball rooms. It was impossible to think it could happen to one’s own self. But here she was. She had killed him. She wasn’t bothered by the guilt of killing him, everybody must have seen how he jumped in front of the car, and then she saw through him. He wasn’t homeless. He was a lunatic. He was passionate about something. Even while dying, his face seemed to be lit up by desire. As the pool of blood around him spread, people started calling for medicine men. Then something strange happened. The dying man smiled and raised his arm.

His first thought was that he was wrong. She was even more beautiful than he had thought she was. The slight arch on her bosom and the curves of her hips. He smiled. Then the second thought calmly made its way through his mind. He was dying. And dying fast. There was only one thing left to do anyway, then he could give up trying to live. He raised his arm and did what he thought was meant to beckon her.

There was a silence for a while.

“Miss, I think he’s trying to reach for you.” A woman in the crowd said uncertainly.

Too flummoxed to deal with the sudden change in events, the woman from the car hastily reached for his hand. She felt his grip tightening. Like people do when they are trying to support someone and to show affection. She felt awed that a dying man could have strength left for such meaningless endeavors. She put her other hand on his hand too and slowly caressed it.

A look of content appeared on his despicable face, as the dying man breathed his last.

The Stranger and the Horse

Not a child's drawing. Probably a Matisse.

The eagle is said to have a far reaching sight. It targets its prey from miles above the ground with a minimum window of error. Similarly a certain eagle soaring above the hills carelessly caught a glimpse of something that did not fit in with the surrounding. Its green beady eyes focused onto the person who was visibly out of element in this area. But that wasn’t what was strikingly odd about him. What made him stand out from the surroundings and the other people, though there weren’t many of those in sight, was the fact that the man had donned an attire that was so visibly off-throwing. It was a typical appearance, something so cliché and ordinary that one could’ve easily ignored this man. His appearance was just so plain and boring. It was like the heaps of things that one sees every day and forgets because they don’t matter; and even if rarely one such thing mattered, the whole brain would have to be rewired to notice it and the subsequent resultant brain would be fried instantaneously due to data overload. Suffice it to say that this person had clearly taken pains to appear normal. And that’s what gave him away. The normalness was too inconspicuous. Normal is not something you do or try to do. It’s something you are, and feigning normalcy is as useless as filling a perforated bowl with water. The person had overlooked this, and that’s what gave him away. His artificial and synthetic ordinariness. And this made anyone looking jump to a simple conclusion. This wasn’t a fugitive on loose, or a disgraced family member returning home in hopes of a warm welcome. This wasn’t a man of this land. This was a stranger, who had decided to enter these lands for reasons yet unknown.

The stranger knew the natives must’ve sighted him by now. That was okay. They did not pose a threat. After living a life like he had, one learns that nothing is a threat, unless it is wilfully made into one. The horse was a sturdy creature. He had got the horse from the last town of the civilised district. He knew that there would be no commuting vehicles ahead, and going on foot was too archaic and tiring. A horse would come in handy. It was a black horse with white spots. The stranger, an industrious city man himself, found the horse too similar to a donkey despite the obvious differences that even every child in the country knew. It was just a horse. A quadruped healthy animal that would do its vital job on the minimum sustenance. As for himself, the stranger had dressed for the occasion. He wanted to appear normal, so shockingly normal that he would sear the canvas of the landscape and rattle the monotonicity of the scene. To accomplish that, he just had to be himself. He would seem strange to the natives, but to any of his associates he would still be clearly himself. The simmering sun cast a light on his aquiline features. His nose was too sharp, and his black gloomy eyes too questioning. His mouth seemed to be transfixed in a permanent state of half smile that made him look like he was always sneering and mocking others. But God has His special designs. While the stranger’s face always silently taunted others, the rest of his body was an object of derision for others. Generally people of his physique are termed ‘dwarves’ but he was something more than that. Dwarves tend to have a normal-sized torso with little legs, but sadly this person had an infinitesimal and abnormally small chest. His legs were quite the normal size. In fact upon close inspection one realized that his shoulder blades were almost joined to his buttocks. From a distance, and if he were walking, the stranger could almost be mistaken for a sentient scissor. You see, when we see ugly people, we wish to not see them ever again and save our eyes from such monstrosities. But the stranger was a different brand of ugly. He was the ugly which made you stare at it continuously for a long time. Although by wearing a long cloak, the stranger had killed two stones with one bird. He had hidden his body form and protected himself from the tearing wind. Lastly, the cowboy hat on his head completed his look with a final jocund touch.

By the curve of the hill on the horizon, the stranger appeared on his horse, silently traversing through the undulating land. Occasionally, he would change his pace, but never did he stop. He wanted to reach his destination at the right point in space and time. Accuracy and timing was pertinent. Soon, he realised he would be start encountering people from around these parts. A wry smile came to his lips as he wondered the musings of these simpletons who lived away from civilization, or maybe they were their own civilization. The trickle down of the stranger and people like him was a treasure for the sovereign of these natives. No doubt, his arrival would’ve caused quite a stir in them. They would be babbling mindlessly about the cause of his visit and extrapolating non-existent facts to justify his presence. Some part of him wished that they would consider him an oracle. A visionary. A prophet. Maybe they would consider him an outlaw, which wouldn’t be very wrong. But what they thought, and what they did would nevertheless be inconsequential. Their role in this venture was akin to the role of the fish tank in a dentist’s waiting room. A means of amusement and passing the time.

“What’s the name of the horse, mister?”

This sudden utterance had stopped his train of thoughts and the horse’s trot. From the shrill voice and the underlying ‘sh’ in the mister, the stranger knew that the voice belonged to a child. A native child. So the natives could speak their language. Well, that was interesting. Apparently, they’re not as stupid as we’ve been lead to believe, thought the stranger. He smiled and indifferent to the question, pushed his hips forward, signaling the horse to go on. The horse jauntily trotted ahead. The route ahead was an ascent and from the plain at the foot of the mountain, the stranger could see various kinds of shops and encampments of the people who probably belonged to this region. They were most likely aware of his marauding by now. It was going to be more amusing than he had anticipated.

The hat slightly tipped down, covering his face but still allowing him to have a good view of his surroundings, the stranger reached the first group of people standing. They seemed to be waiting for him. They were looking at him.

The natives of this region just like all people who didn’t live in the civilization were bald with frail arms and legs. Their short stature was almost always dressed in bland colored robes. They occasionally put on straw hats, depending on the weather. They didn’t carry any weapons nor did they have insignias all over their body. They were a peaceful people, which was their ultimate weakness and the primary reason why they were no longer a part of the rest of the world. They seemed to be smiling as the stranger approached them.

“Hello.” His voice reverberated. It came out more deep than he actually wanted it to be. That irked him but repeating a greeting in a different tone would be silly. And definitely childish. In return they merely smiled. Some of them bowed, a few nodded, most remained passive, and immobile.

“I believe you understand me.”

The stranger paused as he said these words, slightly tilting his head to the side, letting the words sink in. He was expecting a retort of some kind, maybe even hostility. One of them, who the stranger now realized was probably the leader of this party, blinked. The blink was so meaningful. It was the most effective and profitable use of one’s muscles. Using so little energy, so much had been conveyed. The stranger knew that he was understood and they wanted him to go on.

“I want to go across this mountain.”

“Yes”

What? What did that ‘yes’ mean? Was it an acknowledgement of his statement? Was it a permission to proceed? Or was it just an invitation to speak more? Or maybe the person was hard of hearing and wanted him to speak louder? The stranger saw no way out of this quagmire, so he decided to proceed with caution.

“Uh, I am not sure you understand-“

“What’s the name of the horse?”

The stranger’s eyes twitched. Hadn’t the child asked the same question? He didn’t pay attention to it at that time. Was this some sort of entry password? Or maybe a test? He continued the conversation nonchalantly, like the question hadn’t been stated:

“I hope you have no issue with that.”

“What?”

Again, that enigmatic reply. This was getting unbearable. They were definitely stupid. They hadn’t really learned their language now, and even if they had, the mechanics of conversation were unknown to them. They seemed to be talking to themselves or talking about something he wasn’t talking about. With a chuckle, he turned the horse back towards a path and kicked it, prompting it to continue the journey. 

Read the rest of it here.

Hyperion Cantos

The whole series

Yet another scifi thriller? You’re going to be disappointed.

A science fiction series, one of the few that hasn’t really been adapted to the electronic media yet. And it can’t really be made compatible for TV or the cinema. The universe is too vast, the background elements and themes are so creative that to give them shape would be equivalent of undermining them. It is just too succulent to be even slightly altered. If you’re a science fiction reader, and you haven’t read this yet, what are you doing with your life?

There are four books, in the series; Hyperion, Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, Rise of Endymion. Hyperion and Endymion are characters from the Greek mythology. In this series, Hyperion is the name of the planet in the outback where the Time Tombs are present. Endymion is the surname of a character in the last two books. The series constantly pays homage to various people from history. And that is saying something, considering that the setting is many years into the future when Earth no longer exists (its not really destroyed, more of a misplaced). There are references to Churchill and Lincoln. John Keats is a major character. And apparently John Muir has a whole faction of followers who live on a giant Tree planet and fly Tree trunks as spaceships which are powered by little sentient beings called ergs.

To understand the enormity of the plot in this series, you need to understand that the story is not about good and bad. Good stories never are. There’s really no distinction. There are just groups which hold power in one way or another in the Hegemony of Man. The Hegemony is the government-esque system of ruling that humanity has adopted ever since migrating from a dying Earth. This migration is termed the ‘Hegira’ a quaint reference to the ‘Hijrat’ events predominant in Islam. Anyway, these power holders include:

1. The Senate, which is aided by the All-Thing (analogous to an amalgam of all sorts of media) Speaker. Headquarters at the planet Tau Ceti Center or TC²
2. The Christianity’s Church. Plays a very vital role in the last two books. They live on Barnard’s World, where they have built a new Vatican with original pieces of art brought from the Old Earth.
3. Brotherhood of Muir. The environmentalists who carry seeds for planting on planets they travel to, have large tree spaceships. They are the templars and live on God’s Grove

4. 

   Yggdrasil, captained by Het Masteen

   TechnoCore, the AIs that help the Hegemony by providing them with all the machines and the technology. They’ve gifted the Farcasters, a teleporter network to humanity. There is no hardware to these computers and no planet where they excluively live. They exist ‘somewhere’ and keep in touch with the Senate by the Council of AI, where some of them manifest as holographs, kind of. Later we learn that the AI’s like humans have graduations among them; the Ultimates, Stables and Volatiles
   5. Church of the Final Atonement, is a group of weird psychos who believe that the Shrike is the Lord of Pain. Their true motives and workings are unknown but they just seem to be at the center of everything and seem to be involved in everything.

   

   The red glare of it’s eyes is quite infamous

   6. The Shrike. Oof. The Shrike, to say too much about it would be a spoiler.Suffice it to say that the shrike is not the Lord of Pain as the Church of Final Atonement puts it. It is not the villain or the foe. It is not an ally. It is not a henchman or a servant. It is almost nature manifest. Perhaps it is a force of nature, doing what it was made to do, and doing it efficiently and without regard of anything or anyone else. If to do that, it has to mechanically kill millions of people ruthlessly, then so be it. To confuse Shrike for a machine, would be a fatal error. It is just an entity. A certain character says that the Shrike will just be a footnote in the pages of history. Really, now? A chromium armored, havoc wreaking entity, a machine (not literally) of destruction laced with spikes whose very thought sends shivers through the spine, cannot be just a footnote. The Shrike is an interesting character in the books. One of the few ones to prominently appear in all four books. It is the only character that appears in the cover of all four books. And to know who, what the Shrike is and what willed it into being, you’ll have to read the whole series.

   7. Ousters, who aren’t really a part of Hegemony of Man. In fact they are the Russia to the America that is the Hegemony. I almost typed in details about Ousters that are potentially vital to enjoying the story. Let me just say that they are creatures who do not inhabit on one planet. They live on marvellous space-ships, which are in fact entire mobile planets. This gives them agility and makes them a constant threat to the Hegemony
   
   
   You might ask what these massive groups do, or what they bring to the table. They bring politics, evolution, religion, environmental conservation, mystery, action and a power struggle or a status quo establishment to the plot.
   
   
   
   
   READ THE FULL REVIEW HERE