World of Jinn: Awakenings
Author
E Kerrigan
Author Bio
A computer analyst by day and a hobby writer by night.
I have been writing since I was about six years old. Back then I wrote songs and short stories about school kids that I imagined, at the time, were funny. In my early teen years I started to branch in to “horror” novels (which I imagined, at the time, were scary). When I was about fifteen I read The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the complete Ender series (Orson Scott Card), and the complete Rama series (Arthur C. Clarke) all in one summer, and from then on my passion has been creating fantasy and science fiction stories.
My current series, The World of Jinn, is the first story I have decided to publish. I created most of it in my early twenties. I picked it up again last year after having worked many years hard at school (too many tech books to read and no time for anything fun!). I am excited to finally have these stories released. I have no expectation for people to like them as much as I do, but I do hope they bring at the least some entertainment value. I tend to only write things that I hope would generate a conversation, and what better way to do that in a ‘sneaky’ fashion other than fantasy?
Description
A war was fought in the Jinn world between the Shaitans and the Amin. The Shaitans won, leaving the evil King Iblis as primary ruler over the five Jinn kingdoms. Years later in the human realm, five humans (two detectives, a lawyer, a doctor and a teacher) are almost killed by a group of ghouls. However they are unexpectedly saved by two angels. The angels bring these five humans to the Jinn world and are taken to a hidden mountain city. Here they are told by the Mountain Queen that they are in fact Jinn, and that they must shed their human bodies and become Jinn again. After this they can lead the Amin to victory, and destroy Iblis and his army of ghouls once and for all. To become Jinn again, they must retrieve Ambrosia plants hidden throughout the world, and battle more ghouls along the way. However violence does not come without a price, and many sacrifices will be made. Inevitably, it will not be their external enemies that are their greatest danger, but instead a traitor from within.
The World of Jinn trilogy will explore the best and worst of humankind. This first addition certainly focuses on the worst of humankind, and also the guilt that comes with making certain decisions. The first book introduces us to the main characters and explores the past Jinn lives of three of the five main characters. It has many action-driven chapters and sets up the telling of the true core of the story, which appears in parts II and III. It is important to remember that this trilogy is one story and not three. The separation of its parts was carefully crafted and intentional for various purposes that will hopefully speak for themselves once the complete story has been told. The trilogy’s aim is to challenge our ideas of love, morality, forgiveness and faith. It was inspired by various mentionings of the ‘Jinn’ in the Qur’an and Arabian folklore. Although centered on creatures mentioned in Islam, this book examines many paths of faith and argues that regardless of where our beliefs originate, it is our actions that define us.
Book excerpt
Although Jibril told them that they were going to travel through a portal, Aaliyah did not see a star filled path, or a bright whirling tunnel, or even the inside of a tornado for that matter. It was simple- in one moment they were sitting in a large pile of dung, and the next they were sitting on dirt and rocks. Anne immediately returned to a state of unconsciousness while Aaliyah did what Michael, Tom and Sarah were all doing- examine their new, bizarre environment.
They were in a round opening surrounded by a range of mountains, with no visible paths that led out. And everything around them was…well… yellow. In fact, there was not a boulder, rock, pebble or single grain of sand that was not some shade of the color. These yellowy mountains climbed high in to the sky. Unlike mountain ranges on earth, there were no snowy mountain tops, and no clouds hovering over their peaks.
The sky above the mountains was completely white and completely barren. They did not see any clouds, suns or moons. The air was very dry here, but the group breathed without much trouble, apart from a constant scratching at the back of their throats.
Michael could not stop looking directly upwards. “The sky is so interesting!” he exclaimed.
Sarah raised an eyebrow at him. “That’s the only thing you find interesting about this place?”
“No of course not. But it’s pure white! There are no clouds, no snow on the mountain tops, and the air we are breathing is dry as hell. I would say there is next to no water here! And the color! Don’t you see? Color is a part of a spectrum of light. But there is no sun, or any source that seems to produce a large amount of light-yet look at all of the color around us!”
“All of what color? Everything but your damn white sky is yellow,” Tom observed.
“But thousands upon thousands of shades of yellow!”
Tom was not impressed by Micheal’s enthusiasm. “That’s great doc, but I’m a little more concerned about where the hell we are than about the bloody décor.”
Tom turned now to Aaliyah and Sarah, who were placing Anne’s head on the top of Sarah’s jacket. “So where are we?” he asked them.
Both women looked at Tom puzzled. “How are we supposed to know?” Sarah answered.
“You seemed to understand what those two were talking about back at the house.”
Aaliyah shook her head at Tom’s reluctance. “Why don’t you just say it?”
“What?”
“’Those two’? Come on Tom, they were angels!”
“We don’t know that for sure,” Tom argued. “So they had wings…”
“Tom, everyone here knows it.” Sarah said.
Tom snorted, but could not give any other retort, so he moved on: “That was still not the point I was getting at- I want to know what you two know about ‘ghouls’ and ‘Jinn’.”
“We only know what we were told by our parents and taught in our mosque as children,” Aaliyah began to explain.
“Mosque? Like Muslim? I didn’t know you guys were in to that stuff,” Tom interrupted.
Aaliyah rolled her eyes at Tom’s ignorance. “Our parents are more devout to Islam than we are, but that doesn’t mean that they are like that stereotypical nonsense you see in the media all the time Tom. Sarah and I are-”
Sarah took over for a moment, “We practice our faith about as much as you do your Christianity.”
Tom nodded. He knew that this meant not very much.
“Anyways,” Aaliyah continued, “We were taught that the Jinn were beings made by Allah-or God- before humans were created. The first of them were made from fire-“
“What about the ghouls?” Tom interrupted again. He was interrogating Aaliyah much like he would a criminal suspect.
“The ghouls are more folklore than anything else. They aren’t even mentioned in the Quran-an. From what we were told they were creatures that roamed the desert. They transformed themselves in to beautiful women and dogs and such, so they could lure men and young children away and eat them or something disgusting. But there are a lot of different takes on what the ghouls are- some other myths say that they dwell in ruins and graveyards, eating the flesh off of rotting corpses and the like…”
Aaliyah stopped talking and rubbed her eyes. She was tired and she had little energy to continue answering Tom’s questions.
“Well don’t stop!” Tom pressured her, “Tell me more about the Jinn.”
“Tom just let us rest for a bit,” Aaliyah pleaded. “Besides those angels should be able to explain things better to you than I could…if they ever get here.”
