#BlogTour-‘The Death And Afterlife Of Aleister Crowley’ by Ian Thornaton

About the book…

Aleister Crowley, also known as the Great Beast, is one of the most reviled men in history. Satanist, cult leader, debauched novelist and poet, his legacy has been harshly contested for decades.

Crowley supposedly died in 1947, but in Ian Thornton’s new novel, set in the present day, the Great Beast is alive and well and living in Shangri-la. Now over 130 years old, thanks to the magical air of his mystical location, he looks back on his life and decides it is time to set the record straight.

For Crowley was not the evil man he is often portrayed as. This was just a cover to hide his real mission, to save the twentieth century from destroying itself and to set humanity on the road to freedom and liberty.

The Death and Afterlife of Aleister Crowley is an epic novel that will make you see this notorious figure in a completely new light, as he encounters an impressive cast of real-life characters including Timothy Leary, The Beatles, Princess Margaret, Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock

My thanks, as always to Anne Cater of Random Things for the blog tour invite for ‘The Deaths And Afterlife of Aleister Crowley’ which is published in paperback by Unbound.

I asked my husband, a huge fan of heavy metal, well read and learned in counter cultures, how Aleister Crowley died. He told me that his was the quintessential locked room mystery, the body torn limb from limb in a blood spattered room, with no witnesses. Was it the Devil who did it or his acolytes who were in attendance in other parts of the house? A power struggle, demons, aliens or something else entirely?

No one knew….

(Obviously this was my other half thinking it would be good to pull my leg, but this story has circulated for decades apparently)

A quick web search reveals that he died of chronic bornchitis as part of his heroin addiction(or did he?) but the point is, he is such a cultural icon that people still want to believe that he met this gruesome end.

The figure of Aleister Crowley looms large as a cultural icon, a popular figure for Satanic followers and decriers to adore or bemoan, however, no matter what the actual story of his life is, he remains as much a myth so long after his death as he did whilst alive.The urban legends, folk tales, and facts do not always make easy bedfellows and there is still the unease of looking too deeply into the life of this man will find him,his writings and and his thoughts, imprinting onto you.

My own knowledge of Aleister is sketchy at best, to me he was a figure of debauchery, poetry and almost an occultist figurehead. I was therefore intrigued to read this novel which supposes that he did not die, it was a ruse so that he could go and live in Shangri-la.

For the man who was alleged to have ‘destroyed’ the 20th century,what Ian Thornton has done here has imagine not only an alternate lifetime for Aleister, but also an alternate ‘afterlife’ supposing that he is 130 years old at the start of the book. Weaving facts and myths, Ian Thronton has quite clearly put 100% into this project. However, I am still unsure after finishing it, whether his point was to reclaim Aleister’s place in both culture/counter-culture, debase myths, eulogise him as ‘on our side’ (whichever that may be) or just present this alternate ‘maybe this happened’ scenario.

The detail is astonishing but, in the interests of honesty, and it may be related to my personal perception of who/what Aleister Crowley is, I found the book overlong, difficult to read and when I finished felt that maybe I had, and have, missed the point entirely. Because it is so detailed and so inside Aleister’s mind as a first person narrator, it quickly becaming tiring. The swathes of Bible prose , the way the chapters were laid out, the page after page of paragraphs with little dialogue to break it up, made it feel intensely personal, like a one to one conversation.There is only so much of that which this reader can handle.

So at the end, having struggled thorugh this almost 500 page novel, I was still none the wiser as to the motivations of the author, what was fact, what was fiction and what the whole point was. Maybe the point was simply a ‘What if?’ , a thought experiment on the man who saved the 20th Centruy was actually the man  who, behind the scenes, saved it?

I am almost 100% sure I will go back to this in the future as I don’t like to be defeated by a book, but it is so odd.

Does this add to the myth of the man, or dismantle him by making him into an undercover ‘good guy’?

Definitely recommended for those looking for something to get their teeth into, centred around one of the most well known,yet enigmatic men history has ever known.

About the author..

Ian Thornton’s debut novel, ‘‘The Great And Calamitous Tale Of Johan Thoms:How One Man Scorched the The Twentieth Century (But Didn’t Mean To) was published by Simon & Schuster Canada in September 2013. Harper Collins published worldwide on June 28th 2014 to coincide with the centenary of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the pivot of the novel. It was translated across Europe and taught at the Sorbonne.

Prior to becoming a novelist, Ian worked for Broadcast magazine in London and also for Variety. He is a co-founder of the global television industry publisher, C21 Media and www.c21media.net.

He covered the Royal wedding in London for CTV, Canada’s premier independent broadcaster, and has recently written for Wisden Cricketer, The Guardian, The Hindu and for the Soho House magazine, House. He also wrote on the football World Cup in South Africa for the Canadian sports channel, The Score, and has worked for Queen’s University in Ontario, where his project was presented at the White House as part of President Obama’s new media initiative.

Ian is the official biographer of the Compton cricket club in California and has been a judge on the largest Latin American film festival, Expresion en Corto. He is currently producing a feature documentary.

Originally from Leeds, Ian currently resides in Toronto with his wife Heather Gordon and their children, Laszlo and Clementine.

Links-http://www.johanthoms.com/

https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/aleister-crowley-wickedest-man-world/

Twitter @unbounders