THE SINNERS OF ERSPIA

Cosmos Books 2002, 186 pages, cover art by Hieronymus Bosch

The Sinners of Erspia are the inhabitants of a bizarre world, ruled and guided by the hands of Ormazd and Ahriman, twin gods of good and evil. Histrina, a child of Ormazd, is taken by the evil hordes to a camp of terror where she meets Laedo, a man stranded far from home.

Together they start on a hallucinatory journey to understand and escape from the surreal world that holds them prisoner.

This is a novel about the susceptibility of the human mind and how it adapts to the extremes of terror and delight. A novel that could only have escaped from the astounding imagination of Barrington Bayley.

Barrington Bayley: "Its theme is the suggestibility of the human mind. An alien being, whose own consciousness is totally solitary and unassailable, is studying this phenomenon because he thinks humankind is a freak of nature, only semi-intelligent and destined for early extinction. All other intelligent species are like him. The storyline is a series of adventures in experimental societies the alien has set up. Being solitary, the alien has no ethical sense, whereas the protagonist is highly ethical and believes in the doctrine of karma.