Stalking the Shadow of Giants

The last time I talked with my friend Sharyn Tufts, she told me that her feline housemate Louie was so enthralled with Gerald Ciccarone’s The Shadow of Giants that he insisted she share the premise of the book with our readers.

The Shadow of Giants is the first book in Ciccarone’s Millennium’s Gate trilogy, a collection of metaphysical and political thrillers that spans two hundred years. The protagonist, Ignatius “Iggy” Marcus, was raised to believe that a “proper philosophical operating system and motivation for living” was the only way mankind would thrive and survive in the future.

Iggy believes that an honest, genuine self-image can only come from individual achievement, and that self-image is the driving force behind man’s survival.

On the other hand, aberrant behavior emanates from a lack of information or mental acuity, deleterious self-aggrandizement, and immediate self-gratification. Such behavior is the driving force behind man’s destruction.

The Shadow of Giants opens with Iggy being struck by lightning, an incident the author refers to as a “bizarre accident by design.” Iggy awakens with heightened perceptions, expanded mental and physical powers, and a mission—to shepherd humanity away from aberrant behavior to redemption at Millennium’s Gate.

If he is successful, the world will be transformed and the old elitist power structure will be swept away and replaced by the power of the individual. If he fails, the parasites who have always run the world would unleash self-destruction on it through momentous tragedies and the consequences of corrupt schemes.

Of course, the powers that run the world must stop Iggy at all costs. The battle is epic and humanity’s survival hangs in the balance.

In conceptualizing Iggy, Ciccarone states that he wanted to create the epitome of integrity, bearing the standard for all honest men and women everywhere who abhor the destruction of America, which the author calls “man’s greatest political creation.”

According to Mick Tufts, Louie’s other housemate, the book is “phenomenal.” Writing in an Amazon review, Mick says The Shadow of Giants “puts a face on the demons we all know exist and flourish at our expense. The reader becomes immersed in a world we suspect exists behind the scenes, but are now shown how it operates, and why. The characters are brought to life in grand fashion. Anyone who reads this book will wish … that Iggy would step up and save our world. Make no mistake though, the world, as portrayed in this book, will ring genuine and frightening. It will remind [us] that we, and only we, as the citizens of that world, can save it. The scary thing is, Iggy and his actions, are the product of a genius imagination. The rest I’m afraid, is all too real.”

Louie, being a cat, likes to watch, more than he likes to read. Thus, he suggested watching this video clip of MILLENNIUM’S GATE: The Shadow of Giants on YouTube.

He also informed us that On the Shoulders of Giants, the second book of the Millennium’s Gate trilogy, was published July 15.