Shattering Jade : A Novel of Suspense

Rating:
Summary: Where Sex and Spirit Meet
Review: I am pleased to be good friends with the author of this remarkable book. Budd and I have been fellow writers exploring the relationship between sex and spirit, for many years now. He helped me considerably while I was writing my non-fiction SEX AND SPIRIT, and I've offered support and editing advice here and there while he wrote this landmark novel, SHATTERING JADE.

Quite dispassionately, I must say that SHATTERING JADE is definitely Budd's opus - he's truly "done it" with this book. There's no doubt that the novel is bound for literary glory once it gets discovered and lauded by the mainstream.

This novel lays bare in a highly entertaining action/romance format, one of the deepest issues of our times - how to allow the love-based wisdom and inspiration of our hearts, rather than the fear-based manipulations of our heads, to lead us forward in life.

This seemingly real-life narration exposes how to merge sex and spirit so that right in the middle of a wild adventure, we can still be true to our own deeper emerging selves. And the book reads totally as a mystery yarn - there's no preaching here, just living examples of people totally jumping into life's flow.

I know that Budd wrote SHATTERING JADE from his own experiences, which is what gives this book its special punch. The remarkable woman who leads our hero into the depths of darkness and further into the light, is modelled on a deep relationship Budd had with a woman very much like Mahalena. For me, this unique female character who holds the center of SHATTERING JADE represents the true emerging role model and hero for our coming generations.

Mahalena follows utterly and without hesitation, the heart path. She's wild and young and sexy and often uncertain and tough and way over her head - but she plunges forward in faith and courage toward the novel's unique climax. She's a light shining brightly, willing to risk all to discover a new, more heart-centered way for male and female to merge.

This book takes us from San Francisco down to San Diego and Mexico and finally to highland Guatemala, as Mahalena and Jack struggle against all odds to stop a radical, almost sci fi plot to manipulate human consciousness, and also to thwart an ancient resurgence of priestly dominance. The seven main characters are powerful and all-too-human, the scenery is magnificent, and the narrative fast, vivid and honest.

I suspect that casual mystery readers will be positively jolted by the depth of this book, and many readers in the general New Age market will find SHATTERING JADE right on the edge of being "too much" sexually for them. But please, this is not a racy sex book, this is a seriously deep exploration in mass-market mystery/adventure/romance format, of what it means to be a sexual being and a spiritual being at the same time. Yes, some of the sexual encounters are intense, and there's necessary hits of violence at the end too - but as Shakesspeare showed us, that's drama!

As Budd shows in action, we can all lead exciting and fulfilling lives when we let go outmoded religious beliefs, cultural blinders and sexual inhibitions, and open up to that ignition point where spirit and sex unite, right in the middle of seemingly-mundane moments.

I might mention that Budd actually started this book as a screenplay, and it will surely make a remarkable movie as soon as a top-notch director has the nerve to tackle it - this is the creative direction movies need to move toward ... presenting the world with great stories that entertain, and at the same time expose the deeper potential we all possess if only we come to see ourselves as heros like Mahalena and Jack, going for it!

I look forward to seeing this novel as a movie, and meanwhile wish you great fun and insight - and even transformation - in the act of reading and probably re-reading several times, this fine new literary creation.

As Mahalena says over and over as her mantra for the true new age, "A la nueva ... let's embrace our newly-emerging vision of what life is all about ..."

John Selby / ...