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Reviewed by Joel R. Dennstedt for Readers' Favorite
The salutary saying, “Go slowly and good luck” is used often by the monks and lamas in this exotic and engrossing book, Tales of Inner Asia by Todd A. Gibson. It seems to be the best way to begin this review, for if the reader proceeds slowly he will indeed discover his luck is good. In the beginning, the narrator meets a monk wandering the Tibetan hills outside a monastery, where he stays for several days while telling an ancient story about the guidebook that he carries. In this first tale, a severely sick young boy awakens from his illness to find his family dead and the small tribe’s camp abandoned. Found by a strange traveling woman who practices the art of “cutting” - letting karmic demons feed upon her insides - the boy learns her skill, becoming a devoted practitioner. He later breaks his sacred agreement while resting in the tormented city of Lhasa, thereby neglecting his esoteric practice. Fortuitously, he meets a lama who teaches him a different way for doing good, who predicts he will find the guidebook to the hidden lands: a sacred place important to this world’s future. This lavish tale explores fully the young man’s trials and tribulations up to the moment of his death and the guidebook that he leaves behind.
A second tale - told to the narrator by a Sufi Muslim after the first monk departs the monastery – completes Tales of Inner Asia by Todd A. Gibson. Common to them both is the author’s meticulous, descriptive authenticity when dealing with the exotic places, foreign objects, and sacred thinking of the indigenous peoples. One must savor this book slowly – extensive in its terrain – to appreciate the message contained within each tale as well as in the story as a whole. As with any meditation, understanding comes not by overly conscious thinking and appraisal, but by surrendering to one’s own absorption. Rest easy. Go slowly. And good luck.
