Turtle Reader

A new book today. Shike by Robert J. Shea. At first glance, I thought it was about monks and almost skipped it (priests are nice but often all not that gripping [kungfu varieties aside]). For example the first two paragraphs:

They stripped Jebu naked. They threw his yellow aspirant’s tunic into the fire bowl on the right side of the altar.

“You will not need that again. Tomorrow morning you will put on the grey robe of an initiate. Or you will be dead, and we will burn your body:” Sitting on an unpainted wooden stool before the altar, Taitaro, abbot of the Waterfowl Temple, looked steadily at Jebu. Around his neck Taitaro wore the plain white rope that symbolized his office. He was Jebu’s stepfather, but tonight his eyes said, I know you not. He would burn Jebu’s body and throw the ashes in the rubbish pit if his son failed, and he would never look back.

But I thought I’d give it a quick look through first. From the number of sword fights and battles I skimmed, I’m guessing that the above initiate is actually joining some sort of warrior order rather than a religious one. I’m looking forward to reading it. It should provide plenty of reading since it’s 307 days long (I think there may actually be two or three books in it). The OCR wasn’t perfect so you may run into typos if you get ahead of me.

The author’s son Mike Shea is who kindly decided to Creative Commons license it. He has some writing of his own if you’re looking for other things to read.