The Eighth Evil

The Eighth Revision of my Pazuzu Trilogy merits new synopses for each book. The Overviews on the websites also deserved attention, so I scrubbed those too. Remember, the story hasn’t changed, its now better for its rough massage. Ironic that the tale is so bleak …

My Pazuzu Trilogy presumes there is no good, no happy endings – there is no God. Here is the world of the Shur desert. An ocean borders the waste on its northwest side, but there is nothing else. Nomadic heathens have lived in the Shur for generations, waging cold war jihads against their enemies the Chosen.

The Chosen live with the meek UnChosen on oases plagued by heathen terrorism. Chosen and UnChosen share the same religion and petition the Mortal God whom the Chosen tribes had crucified and eviscerated before the heathen jihads began. The death of the Mortal God sparked the conflict based on clan and caste. See, there was One God – the Chosen’s Mortal God and Living God of the heathen are the same entity. Frustrated with unrepentant sinners, that God has abandoned His world.

In His place, alien gods have arrived. Nodding to the forlorn HP Lovecraft, these un-living aliens claim providence. A demon wakes who denies the will of this chaotic pantheon. That demon is Pazuzu and the fiend hides from this world’s new overlords. Pazuzu seeks a mortal body it might possess and walk the Shur in disguise.

The demon finds Benedict Ishkott, a man readers meet face-to-face as he crosses the Shur bareback and without his memory. Benedict is an impractical vessel, so the man and demon come to Capital - as in money and not a typo. Capital is a Chosen monument city surrounded by a polished limestone wall. Drugs, propaganda, exploitation and prejudice have weakened this wall and all sorts of malcontents sneak inside. The disaffected, illegal migrants at Saint Erasmus become the focus of the trilogy.

Pazuzu (pahzoo’zoo) – king of demons in Assyrian mythology.
Manifestation (manufe’steyshun) – indication of the presence of a person or thing.

PAZUZU – MANIFESTATION is the first book in Matthew Sawyer’s Pazuzu Trilogy. This book introduces the godless world of the Shur desert and the sorrowful sinners therein. Readers follow a pair of UnChosen wretches as they flee for their lives from a crime lord in the city of Gomorrah.

The Cortras brothers believe they’ll find safety in the walled city called Capital. While the pair cross the desert, they encounter a man wandering the waste alone. The brothers think he is a heathen terrorist and hope they will collect the reward for the man’s arrest.

The stranger joins the Cortras brothers, but he doesn’t tell them about the voice following him. He doesn’t know the voice is Pazuzu. In fact, the demon reminds him his name is Ben. One man suffering amnesia carries salvation and damnation from the desert.

Pazuzu (pahzoo’zoo) – king of demons in Assyrian mythology.
Emergence (i’merjuns) – gradual coming out as a result of something.

PAZUZU – EMERGENCE is the second book in Matthew Sawyer’s Pazuzu Trilogy. This book continues the bleak tale begun in Pazuzu – Manifestation.

Horror comes to the battered squatters at Saint Erasmus once the demon, Pazuzu, finds a host. Lost in the chaos, Hen Cortras is taken prisoner and followed into the Shur desert, where he meets heathens – nomadic terrorists who crusade against the Chosen’s Church and military.

Pazuzu (pahzoo’zoo) – king of demons in Assyrian mythology.
Abeyance (u’beyuns) – suspension.

PAZUZU – ABEYANCE is the last book in Matthew Sawyer’s Pazuzu Trilogy. The last book follows the demon, Pazuzu, in the shadow of the Promised Land’s destruction.

Achieving its goal, Pazuzu has claimed a human body. The demon steals the frame of a boy and makes the mother a missionary. Before Tamara Stoughnt dies, she proclaims her demon-possessed son is the messiah – the reincarnation of the Chosen’s eviscerated Mortal God. Meanwhile, the younger Cortras brother is arrested and beaten by the Chosen’s military and sent to a detention camp outside Capital.

At the camp, Hen Cortras meets real-life heathens. The prisoners escape the Chosen’s military and Hen joins their march against the Chosen’s Promised Land. The heathen attack has already begun behind the monumental Wall and Capital burns. Pazuzu and Benedict Ishkott, his heathen minister, now cross the fires of Capital in search of the flock gathered by the mother of the possessed boy. The alien gods are now aware of the demon moving through the world and they send monsters.

Books in the Pazuzu Trilogy -

PAZUZU – MANIFESTATION, the first book in the trilogy.

PAZUZU – EMERGENCE, the second book.

PAZUZU – ABEYANCE is the last book of the trilogy.

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Purchase Pazuzu Trilogy Pocket books and Hardcovers at LULU.