“Appearing sporadically in individuals it comes down the ages—the germ of savagery, the seed of freedom.”

-The War Chief, Edgar Rice Burroughs

So that you can jump into the Sunset Saga at any point here are the major story threads by viewpoint character, in the order that they appear along the storyline.

Jay Bracken is a genetically engineered 24th Century time-hunter pre-based in the late 20th Century to be activated by his handlers. He is a deep retrieval asset developed from an executive protection template. Overdesigned to thrive in low tech environments he take sides with the primitives he is intended to harvest becoming a big—though thankfully obtuse—problem.

Charlie Robinson is a quantum physicist who gave up his quest to build a time machine, filed his notes away, and then dropped out to start a science-based church. He is contacted by time-travelers from the future who claim to be his disciples, and to have fabricated his device into two versions: one that ‘loops’ through time, invoking the grandfather paradox, and one that splinters Time, forming an alternative ‘time branch’. He soon becomes their pawn in a scheme to pillage the past.

Three-Rivers is a language-savant of the Seneca Nation. When some misguided white people come into Mother Earth on behalf of a certain ‘Burnt Man’ looking for Hiawatha he offers himself instead, unable to resist a journey beyond the Sunset. After discovering what the whites have done to Mother Earth, and that they mean to imprison him, he steals a ‘thunder-hoop’ which he intends to use as a time-canoeing messiah of the ‘natural people’ to assure their future.

Randy Bracken is the older ‘half brother’ of Jay Bracken. A lifetime criminal, cop-killer, alcoholic, drug-user, and white-supremacist leader, Randy manages to make himself invaluable to Doctor Robinson and his handlers, in hopes of using time travel as a means to circumvent drug laws, gun laws, and every other ‘bullshit law’ on the ‘police state’s bullshit books’.

Richard Burton is the boldest adventurer, best swordsman and most accomplished scholar in the Queen’s service. Yet he wastes away in obscurity at a diplomatic post in South America. Just as he sets off on another of his infamously ill-conceived adventures Captain Burton is contacted by an enigmatic American who claims to be a time traveler. For once Richard Francis Burton has the opportunity to take off in search of the very meaning of life—to safari across Time itself. But will his quest for gnosis ultimately override his loyalty to his Queen, his country, and his wife?

Hyman Maxim resides atop his Stratospheric Tower in 2843 with his consort, a perfect woman of his own design. His generation ship is nearly complete, as he sits infinitely alone at his compact; the last organic member of the human race; the last of his species to trace a life-line back to Ugly little Lucy. The re-teraforming sequence is set in motion and commences in one year. He has enough clones and drones to operate the Endeavor on its interstellar flight. But since those religious fanatics trashed the Genome Vault his last hope for a meaningful company of travelers resides with his Time Hunters.

Discussing philosophy with Aristotle, playing chess with Tamerlane, painting with Leonardo, singing with Hiawatha, drinking with Richard Burton, and enjoying the most distinguished women of a dozen lost worlds would be far preferable to spending eternity with this scary bitch that he designed 500 years ago, when he was too young to know any better.

Each viewpoint character represents a thread in this novel. Hence there are 11 beginnings and 11 endings. Which of these stories are most important is a matter for the reader to decide. The individual stories coalesce into three major strands, identified below. The novel may be read traditionally, by strand, or one character at a time, as you prefer.

A. In 1628, as a boy-ensign in the Dutch Navy, Lord Pendleton Shaw, stood before a Spanish mission in the New World and watched a White heathen cut down the last of the Spanish dons. In 1654, aboard the English man-of-war Drake’s Revenge, Lord Shaw returns to take possession of these savage lands for Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate, and investigate the tales of seven fabulously wealthy cities in the mountainous interior.

B. Hyman Maxim is the oldest and most powerful man to have lived. He has set the earth’s doomsday clock in motion and holds humanity’s future in his depraved grasp from the penthouse of his Stratospheric Tower, rising above the lonely in 2843.

C. Time-hunter, Jay Bracken returns to the 21st Century suffering from the delusion that he is an ancient Germanic war god cast down from heaven among the unworthy mortals who now defile the world he once bequeathed to his worshippers. Jay has been deconstructed and reprogrammed to hunt down and kill Three-Rivers.

1. Lord Pendleton Shaw, Protector General of Port Drake, A

2. Stands-with-demons, Long Way Warrior of The Principal People, A

3. Demon-singer, Shaman of the Mud Waters, A

4. Hyman Maxim, Administrator of the Division Core, B

5. Yule Alpha 7 [AKA Jay Bracken], time-hunter, C

6. Richard Burton, chronological-explorer, B

7. Hush, Last of the Sons of Fierce Woman, A

8. Kelly Thompson, massage therapist, C

9. Joan Henderson, Lead Investigator, Project YF7, C

10. Randy Bracken, chronological-criminal, C

11. Sammy Brighton, deckhand on the tramp steamer Bengal, C