Burt Weissbourd's Minos

Minos is the final piece of Burt Weissbourd’s Corey Logan Trilogy. The trilogy revolves around a no-nonsense female character, Corey Logan, who was once imprisoned for a crime she did not commit and later, she is working to help street kids get their lives back on track.

While the two previous books explore the world of mafias, con artists, runaways and life on the streets; Minos takes a sharp turn as it explores the ideas and beliefs found in the neo-pagan faith, Hellenism.

Hellenism is a religious movement whose followers set out to revive or reconstruct ancient Greek religious practices. The central character of Minos is a teenage girl named Sara, who has begun performing ancient Greek rituals with hopes of summoning the Greek god Theseus, a legendary hero of Athens. Sara senses an imminent danger, and for reasons she cannot explain — at least not in a language that others can comprehend — she needs Theseus to stop a beast that is about to embark on a murderous rampage.  

The novel begins with Sara accidentally starting a fire at school while performing a ritual in the bathroom. She is immediately suspended until further notice and sent to receive professional help. Lucky for Sara, Dr. Abe Stein — who is a prominent character in the previous books — doesn’t write her off as crazy and prescribe her a bunch of meds. Instead, Dr. Stein makes an effort to try and enter into her world and make sense of it.

Here, in the United States, the word “pagan” has a negative connotation. People often connect paganism with dark magic, satanists and sinners. Therefore, when Hellenism came to the United State during the 1990s, it was not taken kindly to. As we see with Sara’s character, they — who believe in a religion that is not one of the “main world” religions — are not taken seriously and are oftentimes discriminated against.

Sara’s belief in Greek gods has her living as an outcast, and as she tries to desperately warn others that there is an impending danger, she is not taken seriously by anyone but Abe. It isn’t until some of her predictions begin to come true that others start to get on board.

While the novel serves to account for pagan faiths, it also tackles the problem of when a person’s belief consumes them. Although Sarah may seem a bit intense, this is not referring to her. Yes, she refers to her friends using Greek god names, but to her, her friends are just the modern-day versions of the gods. The murderer, on the other hand, seems to truly believe that he is a reincarnation of Minos — hence the name of the novel — and like Minos, he must sacrifice young lives to please the Cretan Bull, his master.

With Sara’s character and the murderer, the novel does a great job depicting how religion can create conflict. That is not to say that it sets out to antagonize religion. What this novel does is it shows readers how people can be misunderstood because of their faith, and how someone who is psychologically unstable can use their beliefs to justify their actions, thus creating more stigma towards their claimed religion. The way in which the novel weaves together Greek mythology with the present day — tackling ideas we don’t usually think about — makes it a unique and interesting read.

To read Minos you may purchase it from the link below: http://www.amazon.com/Minos-Corey-Thriller-Burt-Weissbourd/dp/1942600402