I've had the book, The Heretic for a few weeks now, reading it in my spare time. What will follow, are my notes/review of the book.
The book starts out after the end of an earlier book, titled "When The Angels Have Risen" also by Andrew Feder. Although it would be very strange to have books that are sequels, yet not written by the originating author, like they do with movies.
One of the very first things I noticed, that I don't really recall seeing in a book before, is a warning. "Warning: Due to the author's Selective Tourettes Syndrome, the following contains some profanity and obscenities that might burn your little eyes and ears. So read at your own risk, because this is your last and only warning. You've now been warned... So good luck...". Hopefully the warning isn't enough to scare you away.
The biggest part of the book is tricky to explain, yet easy to read. Jerry Fletcher is having some troubling dreams, so it's suggested to him that he should undergo a past life regression. During his regression he sees various things from different time frames. Finally he's back to a life that fills the majority of The Heretic, as Aias. Alright, so now we are at a later point in Aias's life, when his family asks him some questions about his earlier exploits, when he was a young man. So now Aias, starts to tell his family of Aias the Decapitator (AKA The Heretic), Alexander the Great's long forgotten right hand man. So in a sense it's a story told by a man about his past, inside of a recovered memory, of a fictional character contained inside of a book with a picture of a spartan style helmet on the cover, written and conceived of by an author, by the name of Andrew Feder. I guess that's not all that tricky to explain after all.
I should note, this book is not as hard to follow as I may have made it seem in the last paragraph. This book is around 280 pages, with decent size text, probably an eighth of an inch tall. Large enough I can read it without my glasses if I choose to. The story and events contained in the book flow at a pace where it makes it easy to keep reading, and you actually wonder what will happen next.
The book almost seems like it should be a movie. So it would seem, that it would be fairly easy for Andrew to convert the book to a screen play. There is lots of carnage, sex scenes, romance, an implied alien presence that becomes more prevalent as the book progresses. Several threads are introduced, and nicely tied up by the end of the book. Being as this book was mostly played out during a past life regression, I think it would be very easy to introduce new installments to the life of Jerry Fletcher. I can truly say after reading this book, I'm looking forward to see what happens next in this fictional reality. Good job Andrew, I really enjoyed reading your book.
So that's the end of my not so typical book review. I recommend giving this book a read.
The Heretic Website