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	• Leap into Darkness Part 2: Leap into Darkness John W. Cassell Amazon, 2007 - 38 pages average customer review:based on 2 reviews view larger image
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The second fight scene (the first occurring in Leap into Darkness Part 1: Not my Best Birthday) was less a fight, more a massacre of Cassell by a black hulk, a massacre realistically described in dastardly detail, as were John's feelings after the fact of that utter defeat, discussed through dialogues with his girlfriend, Connie, and bodyguard/friends, Joe, and Sean. The character discussions deducing the why of the black hulk attack were perceptive (and more so with the knowledge of where the plot goes, due to this being my second go round with the novel serialized through three series of Amazon Shorts, see below).

The reader is more than ready to continue reading, to discover if the speculations for the hulk attack are accurate.

John's hit-and-miss relationship with Connie, and the first sex scene with Sybil were on target, with the emotional machinations coming across with clarity and realism, serving as an effective literary contrast to the military actions and the new nation's cultural evolutions, with all of the above providing concrete foundations upon which to vine a convoluted gaming. Extremely well done!

John Cassell's novels provide rich, satisfying reading, so much so that I'm currently re-reading UNCERTAIN PARADISE. (See my reviews of the trade paperback and Kindle versions available on Amazon Uncertain Paradise: 1973 and UNCERTAIN PARADISE: 1973 [PART ONE] (n/a).) That novel is also available in a parallel series of Amazon Shorts, on which I'm currently posting reviews (this is the 4th).

After rereading chapters 2 and 3 of UP, I decided to also re-read chapter 1, having skipped that chapter the first time through, having already read that segment of the plot through the Armageddon pair of Amazon Shorts Armageddon: 1973 - Part 1 and Armageddon: 1973 - Part 2. Now having reread chapter 1 in UP, I'm even more impressed with the politico-military plotting (Russian nuclear submarine intrigue), especially how Cassell designed that Armageddon situation around a small-island cultural gestalt, and tied the whole into his protagonists' (John and Connie) personal situation... or was it the other way around...

The decision to reread chapter 1 in UP was a good one, especially with the background of the rest of the plot in mind, because the extent of the literary feat became more obvious, of how much perfectly woven complexity Cassell created on such a panoramic scale, spanning politics, economics, and military maneuvers related to not only the birth of a nation, but to John and Connie's dire personal situation, mirrored within the collection of expatriates on the island.

The decision to reread chapter 1 also paid off in confirming how good an action sequence it is, as an intro to the rest of the enthrallingly convoluted plot. An enormous amount of knowledge, including military and island ambiance background, went into the details of that situation. Even so, the presentation could have been dry if not for Cassell's ability to set and carry the action, and to develop characters and exchanges among them into reader responses of cheering roars, "right on!" or "FAR OUT!!!" (as the Cassell in Crossroads: 1969 (N/A) and Odyssey: 1970 would say).

I've already said a lot in my reviews of Armageddon 1&2, but I wanted to note here that I'm seeing that pair of Amazon Shorts not just as a great action-adventure series in its own right, but as an amazing foundation for the novel, UNCERTAIN PARADISE. The organizational capacity of Cassell's mind is something to behold. That capacity floods through at hurricane levels in UP, as the storm brews and bellows in chapter 1.

The way the disbelief of the presence of the submarine was handled was entertaining, each step of the way, especially whenl Major Hill was brought into the action, giving his decisive commands on the fly, causing the reader to raise a fist into the air, to tell Hill's second in command not to worry... an intuitive master was at work. In so many ways the situation was hair-raising and edge-of-seat inducing. So many layers of levels; I wouldn't have seen them without having read the rest of the story, then rereading chapter 1 (titled "Beneath The Tempest's Veil" in the novel)... To be fair, I should admit that if I had a steel trap memory for factual details, I would have seen more of this depth and complexity the first go through.

With that background in mind, when the island fact sheet from the PCTC (Pan-Caribbean Trade Council) was presented in this Amazon Short (chapter 3 of UP the novel), that sheet had a different perspective than it did without the memory of the detail in chapter 1. From a reread perspective I was able to see how Cassell presented, then repeated some of the same data, using different ways and different angles. That repeat was very effective, especially with such a huge collection of facts vitally applied to the novel.

Likely many readers will wonder how Cassell came up with all those NAMES, titles, and geographic descriptions! Not even one of them felt "made up." Now I'm more in awe of what Joseph Way posted in the Amazon Shorts category forum on Cassell's work, about readers saying they believed that the PCTC, the fact sheet, and Cassell's St. Margaret's Isle actually exist... so, their question was, "What did Casell have to do to get permission to reproduce those actual documents in his novel, and in its parallel Amazon Shorts series."

Usually I'm craving "newness" when reading fiction, because freshness generally gives a stronger regenerative effect to the reader. Yet, I'm thoroughly enjoying the reread of UP, with retrospect's greater capacity to see and admire the mechanics underlying the effects.

The author's blurb at the top of this buying page gives an excellent synopsis of how the three Amazon Shorts series present the whole of the novel.

With continued admiration for the good works of a colleague,
Linda Shelnutt
Shelnutt is the author of several Amazon Shorts and Kindle books, including:
Morning Comes: the Pre Dawn Blues - Part 1
The Rose and the Pyramid (The Books of Gem)
Myrtle's Ultimate Mystery

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Entertaining

Violet Dawn

John W. Cassell is an amazing author who never ceases to entertain with his wonderful books and shorts. And Part II here of Leap into Darkness is no less entertaining. He has a way of pulling you into his story and keeping you there, anticipating the next page. I am never disappointed with his work. And I always finish with the feeling that I was on his adventure with him. Five stars.

A young American and his girlfriend, on the run from vengeful mobsters and the numbers-hunting FBI, flee to St. Margaret's, an out of the way island in the Caribbean. Instead of refuge, however, they find a place fighting for its life against Communist guerrillas and themselves the target of the mysterious organization, Caribbean Horizons Ltd. The young man is immediately impressed into the island's pathetic Air Militia, coming under enemy fire his first night. His girlfriend shortly disappears and he finds himself inexorably drawn into the deadly disputes that infest the island. ?Leap Into Darkness? is Part One of the ?St. Margaret's Trilogy,? which together are the sequel to ?DeVilliers County Blues?, currently featured as a seventeen part serial at Amazon Shorts. ?The Flight Lieutenant's Court Martial? is Part Two of the Trilogy and ?The Birth Of A [Small] Nation? is the third. An introduction to the island and its people is found in the independent two part Short ?Armaggedon: 1973.? Together they tell a story of love and hate, war and intrigue, ambition and survival as they can only exist in a very small, isolated society caught up in the process of nation-building, a process in which the traditional and modern segments of an island's culture clash in ?winner take all? conflict.

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