There are books that open like secret doors, novels that grab you before you even close the first page. This one is of that kind: an esoteric thriller that you devour in a hurry, like you gulp a glass of fresh water after a long walk in the sun. You think you’re taking a moment’s rest, but it’s the story that sweeps you away, breathless, relentless. Four hours? Barely enough time to breathe. The narrative flows at a dizzying pace, and you almost thank the author for having scattered, here and there, dives into the past – saving pauses, narrative breaths that allow you not to faint from literary intoxication.
Three destinies, three strangers at the start, three souls that chance or fate (it doesn’t matter, everything gets mixed up here) will link in a quest so captivating that you forget the existence of dictionaries. A rare word? Doesn’t matter, you move on, you run, you let yourself be carried away. Because that’s what it’s all about: a race, a hunt, an initiation. Baseball, omnipresent, is not just a sport, but a living metaphor, a ball thrown across the ages, loaded with secrets, symbols, and that magic that makes each pitch a journey, each reception a revelation. The author, surgically precise, doesn’t get bogged down in frills or useless digressions. Everything is there, just what you need to understand, to feel, to vibrate. And you find yourself, page after page, running with the characters, searching with them, hoping, trembling.
The places, then. Sets that are not just backdrops, but full-fledged actors, mysterious spaces, almost sacred. As soon as the book slips out of your hands, you rush to the screens, eager for images, videos, as if these landscapes still held, somewhere, the echo of the secrets the author has deposited there. The three protagonists quickly become travel companions. Their faces take shape in the reader’s mind, not because they are described in detail, but because they are inhabited, fleshed out, alive. Around them, a gallery of secondary characters, all necessary, all bearers of a light or a shadow, facilitating or obstructing the quest, but always, always making it denser, more captivating.
And then there’s the revelation. How many times have you read promises of exceptional secrets, only to get a taste of incompleteness, of trickery? Not here. The ending is up to the expectation, rich, nourishing, with revelations that leave you full, but already hungry for the next one. Because you can feel it, you can sense it: the story is not closed. Areas of darkness remain, corners to explore, mysteries that still whisper. You close the book wondering when volumes two and three will come out, like you leave a banquet hoping for the next one.
You think you understand everything, and yet, you feel that the book is beyond you, that it surpasses you, that it leaves you in front of paintings so rich in details that you haven’t seen everything, haven’t grasped everything. The author, like a magician, takes you far beyond the plot: he pushes you to think, to progress, to question your own place in the grand game of the world.
So, if you like baseball, history, esotericism, quests that pierce your soul, dive in. But be careful: once you start, you’ll have a hard time stopping. Because this book, you see, is not just a read. It’s an experience. An initiation. A ball thrown into the night, and which, perhaps, will never fall back.
Learn more about the AA Saga: www.saga-aa.fr
Marylin’s Grand Slam, Vol 1 of the AA Saga; Didier Cannioux, at Editions Illis, 19€
Available on the site www.illis-editions.fr
and from January in exclusivity on www.cultura.fr
Michel G.
