(10) The Insiders (Shadowlands)

The Insiders: Exploring the higher realms of possibility: John Little is intrigued by a friend's illicit involvement in the old ways, which date back to a time long before the rise of the New Faith. Sent on a journey to find the Teacher of the Age, he learns from a number of diverse Masters along the way.

The Insiders is a response to The Teachers of Gurdjieff by Rafael Lefort.

"In answer to your many as yet unasked questions, know-what is ten a penny and often not worth the paper it's printed on. I'm here to teach you know-how and that is an altogether different kettle of fish." ~ The Master Malik Joujai.

The Insiders is a short novel, circa 38,000 words. It is book 10 in the Shadowlands series; however it is a standalone book and you do not have to read the other works first.

The Insiders is now available for free download as an epub or mobi ebook from our web site.

You can also find the book at Goodreads.

• By Etienne de L'Amour ~ Google+

(9) Whisperings of Love (Shadowlands)

Whisperings of Love: The wise healer Mair Freida is ill and her friends must embark on a long journey to bring back a cure.

The old lady at length hears the whisperings of love, calling to her. It is time to move on from the hidden mountain sanctuary of babs chu to join the Elder Abbots on the next stage in her continuing evolution in the still more distant mystical realm of Shu'la beland.

But is Mair Freida strong enough to make that journey? And with a deranged killer on the loose, will he thwart the Network's plans and gain access to Shu'la beland?

Whisperings of Love is book 9 in the Shadowlands series. It is available for the Kindle at Amazon UK, Amazon US and European web sites. ASIN: B007DIMNF2. If you don't have a Kindle, simply google "free kindle reading apps".

You can also find the book at Goodreads.

• By Etienne de L'Amour ~ Google+

(7) The Gift (Shadowlands)

The Gift tells the moving story of Emily Hart and Bradley Frogmorton as they awaken to the Gift and answer the summons of the Doyen Mugwash ... and what comes after. If you have 'the Gift', whatever you do, keep the secret to yourself.

“You're beginning a whole new life -- and for your own good and for the good of your future employers, it is better that you leave your old attachments behind. The more completely you make this transition, the better. 'To serve and gladly' is our motto, and the very essence of our activity. This should be your only concern from now on. It is a great honour to be called to enter the ranks of the Ancient and Noble Order of the Mugwash, and vitally important that you understand, appreciate and above all wholeheartedly embrace this ethos; and develop and nourish the precious Gift that makes all this possible. Don't let us down.” ~ The Noble and Most Reverend Mater Mugwash.

The Gift is a short novel, circa 42,000 words. It is book 7 in the Shadowlands series, but may be read on its own.

OCTOBER 2017 UPDATE: You can download copies of ALL the books from here on our web site. Although marked as "review copies", there are no strings attached.

Reviews

Five read, Five more to go
Amazon.com, 21 January 2013
By Paul Berglund
☆☆☆☆☆

"The Gift, by Etienne de L'Amour, is Book 7 in the Shadowlands Series, from Sher Point Publications, UK. I have read 5 of the 10 thus far, and these five all take place in a world very much like our own, yet different and mysterious, as though somehow from a parallel dimension, seeming like out of the past yet in present time.

Within this world of the Shadowlands are places such as Narayana, Godweir (the Outlands) and the Shangri-La-like Abshar. As I read, I always think it must figuratively be somewhere in Central Asia or near India, but it really could be many places.

Adventures with journeys happen here, something of the nature of Harry Potter-like journeys, but with their own uniqueness and character. There are, layered throughout, or brought forth here and there in each of the books, thought-provoking philosophical statements and 'life-sayings', if you will, of a quality you don't find often. The intriguing adventures seem to have at least this dual purpose, one to entertain, and the other to help, to assist the 'traveler' (the reader) on his or her own journey.

In this 7th book, The Gift, there is a most interesting idea as the basis for the story. The central feature of the tale is the seemingly very unjust and backwards state-of-things where when people who are 'gifted' with sensitivity (telepathy and related abilities) are 'found out' they then have to spend their lives in servitude to other seemingly unworthy and disagreeable people. From this starting point proceeds the adventure. As with the other books in the series I have read, I have found The Gift thoroughly enjoyable, and as a bonus there is within it the happy tear-in-the-eye in the concluding pages, which some of us readers do enjoy now and then. For this reader, the only question now is which one of the remaining books in the series to pick up next."

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Another great read in the Shadowlands series!
Amazon.com, 9 March 2013
By Omar
☆☆☆☆☆

"This book, like others in the Shadowlands series rocks along with a solid story line sprinkled with humor and wisdom. The central motif, that an ability like telepathy might be the cause of the subjection of those possessing it by others is an intriguing and unusual perspective on how a society might deal with such abilities.

Is the 'Gift' a blessing or a bane to its possessor? And how far can it be developed? All this and more in a thoroughly enjoyable read.

Certainly this book demands a sequel and I hope there is one on the way."

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The Gift is available for the Kindle at Amazon UK, Amazon US and European web sites. ASIN: B007D35KI4. If you don't have a Kindle, simply google "free kindle reading apps".

You can also find the book at Goodreads.

Enjoy!

• By Etienne de L'Amour ~ Google+

(5) The Lucian Uprising (Shadowlands)

The Lucian Uprising: Things were bad enough with the economic depression and the growing poverty. Then they were further inflamed by the rise to power of a new political party with an age-old agenda, led by the charismatic despot Lucian.

This is the heart-rending story of friends caught up in those upheavals, and of help they receive from a clandestine, mystical organization simply known as The Network.

The Lucian Uprising is book 5 in the Shadowlands series. It is available for the Kindle at Amazon UK, Amazon US and European web sites. ASIN: B007C7TRRQ. If you don't have a Kindle, simply google "free kindle reading apps".

You can also find the book at Goodreads.

• By Etienne de L'Amour ~ Google+

(4) In Search of Destiny (Shadowlands)

In Search of Destiny is set in the disparate realms of the Outlands; Sher Point, the metropolis of the Freelands, and the mystical kingdom of Narayana in the East.

It tells the story of Conrad Harper, who sets out one day to search for his destiny and heart's true desire; of the help offered him by a mysterious organization known simply as the Network; his journeys with the Master of the Tradition, Tenzing Jangbu Rinchen, and of his finding romance, ancient knowledge, unfettered awareness and wholeness of being.

And it shows how ordinary and everyday experiences, which we tend to take for granted and often do not value, can be brought into service and woven together into a rich tapestry with an altogether higher purpose.

In Search of Destiny is book 4 in the Shadowlands series. No real harm will be done by reading this book first.

In Search of Destiny is now available for free download as an epub or mobi ebook from our web site.

You can also find the book at Goodreads.

Reviews

Another exciting and thought-provoking book in the Shadowlands series
Amazon.com, November 9, 2013
By Omar
☆☆☆☆☆

This is Book 4 in the Shadowlands series but can be read and enjoyed as a stand-alone book.

Conrad Harper lives in the Outlands and has grown up with a mother determined that he grow up to be a 'normal' person, a person with a permanent job, who marries and raises his children. But Conrad's father wants something different for him; to go out into the wider world, to reject a humdrum lifestyle and seek a better future. From an early age Conrad has been told tales by his father, tales from an ancient oral tradition said to contain a subtle knowledge.

Then comes the day when Conrad's father dies, leaving Conrad expected to be the 'man of the house.' Having thus committed himself to a life of drudgery one day he meets an old lady, a Traveller, who tells Conrad to leave his home and country and to go in search of his destiny.

Thus begins Conrad's adventures in the Freelands, the city of Sher Point and the mystical land of Narayana.

The story rocks along as any good adventure story should, but with an added bonus of the sprinkling throughout of bits of wisdom, guidance offered to readers, to make of what they will. The stories Conrad's father told him begin to come alive.

Does Conrad find his Destiny? To find out I highly recommend you read this most interesting and enjoyable book!

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Gets you thinking about where your life is going
Amazon.com, October 19, 2013
By Brendan Addison
☆☆☆☆☆

If you have ever wanted more in life than programmed work, entertainment, economy-worship, and political sideshows, you'll love this book. Etienne de l'Amour is busily creating stories that give you a bit of a kick start to get out of your ruts and on with your destiny. What is destiny? I can't say exactly, but it definitely gets me moving when I remember it! The story is about Conrad, who is a lot like most of us - stuck in a dead-end life, wishing for more. What I like about the book is the guidance it seems to give, indirectly, for where to find your own way onto the road to destiny. I got my copy free as a review copy, but I would have paid for it easily knowing what I know now!

Enjoy!

• By Etienne de L'Amour ~ Google+

(3) Escape From the Shadowlands

Escape From the Shadowlands: Something has gone drastically wrong with Psi, the caretaker system, and the effects are even being felt in the higher planes. The experiment in the Shadowlands, formerly the Eden Project, is to be terminated, imperilling the six billion souls down there, as well as the representatives and resident field workers. Marie and her younger brother foolishly decide to make the descent, in order to help out, but their plans go awry and they become separated from one-another, and they forget their origins.

Fortunately, they eventually find help in the form of the writer and spiritual Master Tenzing Jangbu Rinchen and his clandestine organization, The Network.

If you like Doris Lessing or Idries Shah, you might like Escape From the Shadowlands. If you've read Doris Lessing's Briefing For a Descent into Hell, you'll know where EFSL is coming from; and if you've read James Hilton's Lost Horizon, or watched the films, that's where EFSL ends up.

Escape From the Shadowlands is book 3 in the Shadowlands series, and is preceded by two prequels: (1) The Lost Treasure of Roth Nagor and (2) Life on the Flipside. You don't have to read the prequels first and it's probably a good idea to read this book first.

The background genre of this book, as ever, is mystical faction. It also contains elements of technological science fiction.

☆☆☆☆☆ "Astounding, dizzying journey! Entertaining, enlightening."

Reviews

Astounding and Dizzying Journey!
Amazon.com, 24 January 2013
By Zenizen
☆☆☆☆☆

"Etienne de L'Amour has stepped up to a very great challenge and taken up the torch from the likes of Doris Lessing with his book, Escape From the Shadowlands. In so doing, he has done all of us a very great service. The book details the journey that we all face in one way or another and provides signposts that, properly understood and followed, can help us successfully navigate the perilous way. For a very entertaining and - dare I say enlightening - story that you will relish and remember, please treat yourself to a very good read indeed :)"

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Escape From the Shadowlands is available for the Kindle at Amazon UK, Amazon US and European web sites. ASIN: B0079Q8WZ8. If you don't have a Kindle, simply google "free kindle reading apps".

You can also find the book at Goodreads.

If you want to try before you buy, you can read chapter 1 of Escape From the Shadowlands here. Alternatively, you can download a preview in mobi/kindle format here. The preview contains the first 10% of the book.

• By Etienne de L'Amour ~ Google+

Sources of inspiration

I would say that the primary inspiration for my works has been the writer Idries Shah who did so much to introduce the way of the Sufi mystic to western audiences from around 1960 to the present day, beyond his death in 1996. One of the ideas of which he wrote was that the realm we live in and call the 'real world' (the concrete, physical plane) is in fact a lesser world of decay and degeneration, and that beyond that, and our destiny, is what the Sufis call the Real World; that behind the everyday world of illusion lies a blueprint or design (a naqsh) in the Real. C.S. Lewis mentions the shadowlands in a similar vein.

This idea in turn inspired one of Shah's pupils, the author Doris Lessing who wrote in her Canopus in Argos series of a catastrophe of cosmic proportions severely and adversely affecting our link to the Source, which provides us with a higher nutrition and higher contact. My novel Escape From the Shadowlands was also inspired by Doris Lessing's Briefing For a Descent into Hell.

Shah encouraged certain books to be written by students and personalities associated with his work (and also himself wrote works using pseudonyms) and I've found addition inspiration in these works, such as Bashir M. Dervish's Journeys with a Sufi Master; Omar Michael Burke's Among the Dervishes; Ernest Scott's The People of the Secret; and also Desmond R. Martin's Account of the Sarmoun Brotherhood, a mystical hidden community said to reside in the mountains of Afghanistan (also known to the mystic George Ivanovich Gurdjieff as the Sarmoung).

Prior to my involvement with the Sufis, I was also inspired by the likes of [the fraudulent] T. Lobsang Rampa's The Third Eye; Carlos Castaneda's teachings of Don Juan; the explorer and theosophist Alexander David-Neel's With Mystics and Magicians in Tibet; Helena Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine; James Hilton's Lost Horizon (twice made into a film); and by the publications and practises of British Buddhist and Zen societies.

These early interests lost their appeal once my studies with the Sufis began to kick in. Indeed during that time I felt so many of my assumptions, beliefs and conditioning being slowly eroded, challenged or at times unceremoniously sandblasted. The last thing the Sufi mystics do is pander to or collude with the ego or Commanding Self: quite the converse.

This went on until at one point, around the time of Shah's death in 1996, I was no longer sure who I really was any more; beyond the "black hole" that had been me: it was so much more a process of unlearning and uncovering than learning or adding to the stock of information and opinion that lay folk call knowledge. It wasn't until perhaps a decade after Shah's death that I was again able to look at these former interests with fresh, new eyes.

Though preceded by two prequels, the best place to start reading the Shadowlands series is book 3, Escape From the Shadowlands.

Painting: Inspiration by Jean-Honoré Fragonard.

• By Etienne de L'Amour ~ Google+

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog, Mystical Faction. I write novels and novellas in the Shadowlands series using the nom de plume Etienne de L'Amour and dystopian sci-fi as H.M. Forester, and this blog contains details and samples of my writing, together with my inspirations, trials, tribulations, and random thoughts.

The genre in which I generally write is mystical faction, hence the blog title. This is a blend of fact and fiction, based on fact which is spun-out and woven into a fabric containing elements of myth and imaginative fiction.

You can download previews of the novels from our Dropbox mirror site:

• Previews of Etienne de L'Amour's novels (Shadowlands series)
• Preview of H.M. Forester's novella (The Dissidents: A novella)

Though preceded by two prequels, the best place to start the Shadowlands series is book 3, Escape From the Shadowlands.

The books in the Shadowands series are:

1. The Lost Treasure of Roth Nagor. Historical prequel.
2. Life on the Flipside (or In Two Minds). Prequel.
3. Escape from the Shadowlands.
4. In Search of Destiny.
5. The Lucian Uprising.
6. Time and Time again. Not published as yet.
7. The Gift.
8. The Host and the Guests.
9. Whisperings of Love.
10. The Insiders: Exploring the higher realms of possibility. A standalone book.

Read some background info about the Shadowlands and sources of inspiration here.

• By Etienne de L'Amour ~ Google+