The Mind Altar: A Novel of Subterranean Terror by Michael Just

Giddings Street Press, 2018

ISBN 13:9781530441297

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

The Mind Altar: A Novel of Subterranean Terror by Michael Just is head and shoulders above most novels in the science fiction, horror and mystery genres. The author describes scenes in just the right amount of detail to place the reader within the story.  He reveals the personalities and motives of the characters gradually, keeping the reader engaged.  His plot has twists and turns that keep the reader continually guessing about the story’s outcome.  The ending is no less complicated and intriguing, seemingly doubling back on itself three times.

Taking place in the near future, the U.S. government sends a team of black-ops mercenaries to the desert in the Four Corners region of the country.  Communications with a secret facility buried in a mountain, called Bright Angel, went dead a few weeks earlier.  Each of the seven-team members has a special skill, and knows only part of their mission.  Our protagonist, Eurydice Wiles, is an expert in resurrecting programs and data from crashed computers.  She is buttoned up, avoids emotional contact and has no memories from the age of seven to eight.

As Eury and her teammates explore the myriad of Bright Angel’s rooms and caverns, they discover hollowed-out, plasticized bodies with no heads, preserved brains cut in-half, and dozens of crisp, burned bodies.  All computer hard drives have been smashed.  Eury intuits that the entire tunneled mountain is a computer and that ghostly visions and voices are part of its programs.  Did the staff and inmates go mad and kill each other?  One-by-one the team members are dying.  What will Eury and the other survivors find when they get to the Mind Altar at the heart of the mountain? Highly recommended.

Contains: Mild sexual situations, moderate gore.

Reviewed by Robert D. Yee