Headstrong, tomboyish Annetta Severio and her cynical, sharp-tongued friend Jason Kinsman are two teenagers from Toronto, making the most of their mundane existence. Their world is forever changed when they discover that their fathers were once the protectors of a castle called The Eye to All Worlds located where the fabric of the universe is weakest, creating gateways to other worlds, hidden within the bowels of an underwater base known only as Q-16. Learning of the threat of a warlord bent on conquering the multiverse, Annetta and Jason race to reassemble Annetta's grandfather's army, known as The Four Forces before it is too late.

""The lord of the tower has risen, and he is angry" A year has passed since the events of the battle against Mislantus. Now, Annetta, Jason and their companions prepare for the end of their final year in high school. Dreaming of the future, they do the best they can to balance their time as the young commanders of the Four Forces and as teenagers. Things are thrown off course, however, with the arrival of Annetta's great-uncle and his proclamations which leave the members of Q-16 questioning their lives. Elsewhere, on Terralim, the home of the Water Elves, an evil amasses on the horizon, threatening to burn all in its path, forcing Puc Thanestorm away. On their own and without the aid of their mentor, Annetta and Jason must navigate through a sea of decisions as they strive to come to terms with who they are meant to be.

"In this the seed of chaos thrives..." The dust from the battle against Razmus has only begun to settle, and on Gaia, Annetta Severio tries to come to grips with her new status amongst its citizens, as well as the losses she has suffered along the way. There is no time for the healing of wounds, however, when a mysterious illness takes hold of the Prince of Gaia, forcing her to return to Earth in search of answers. Reunited with her best friend Jason Kinsman, as well as the other inhabitants of Q-16, her goal is further complicated when an old nemesis of the Four Forces threatens one of the allied powers. Elsewhere an evil stirs, one which vows to end not only Earth, but the existence of all life. Its awakening will bring about a chain of events that will change the lives of Annetta and her friends forever.

Time will no longer extend infinitely into the past, nor will it come to an abrupt beginning. Big Bang will be as if it had never been; it will vanish from the scene. Perhaps, instead of one world there will be many worlds, and many you's in place of you. What happened to all the you's you might have been if you had made different decisions at critical junctures in your life? Are they still out there somewhere, living their lives? Is it possible you can visit with them? In your new world, straight lines will no longer exist; they will all be curved, but some will seem as if they are straight! Numbers will become beautiful of themselves and have little to do with things! Number theory results - oh, yes, at a low level - are attained here, but some perhaps unknown to mathematicians to this day! Death? What is death? You will explore that question with me and find many possible answers including that death may be but occasional brief interludes between lives of your animus or soul.

Of the several works on the rise and development of the Babi movement, especially those dealing with the life and work of its founder, Sayyid Ali Muhammad Shirazi, few deal directly with the compelling and complex web of mysticism, theology and philosophy found in his earliest compositions. This book examines the Islamic roots of the Babi religion, (and by extension the later Baha’i faith which developed out of it), through the Qur’anic commentaries of the Bab and sheds light on its relationship to the wider religious milieu and its profound debt to esoteric Islam, especially Shi'ism. Todd Lawson places the two earliest writings of the Bab within the diverse contexts necessary to understand them, in order to explain why these writings made sense to and inspired his followers. He delves into the history of the tafsir (Qur’an commentary) genre of Islamic scholarship, situates these early writings in the Akhbari, Sufi and most importantly Shaykhi traditions of Islam. In the process, he identifies both the continuities and discontinuities between these works and earlier works of Shi’i tafsir, helping us appreciate significant elements of the Bab’s thought and claims. Filling an important gap in the existing literature on the Babi movement, this book will be of greatest interest to students and scholars of Qur'an commentary, Mysticism, Shi'ism, the modern history of Iran and messianism.

In Creation and Contemplation, Julien Decharneux explores the connections between the cosmology of the Qur’ān and various cosmological traditions of Late Antiquity, with a focus on Syriac Christianity. The first part of the book studies how, in exhorting its audience to contemplate the world, the Qur’ān carries on a tradition of natural contemplation that had developed throughout Late Antiquity in the Christian world. In this regard, the analysis suggests particularly striking connections with the mystical and ascetic literature of the Church of the East, which was in effervescence at the time of the emergence of Islam. The second part argues that the Qur’ānic cosmological discourse is built so as to serve the overarching theological message of the text, namely God’s absolute unity. Despite the allusive, and sometimes obscure, way in which the Qur’ān talks about the world’s coming into being and its maintenance in existence, the text betrays its authors’ acquaintance with cosmological debates of Late Antiquity. In studying the Qur’ān through the prism of Late Antiquity, this book contributes to our understanding of the emergence of Islam and its relationship with other religious traditions of the time. Winner of the 2022 Marie-Antoinette Van Huele Prize and the 2023 Richard Kreglinger Prize (both Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences, Free University of Brussels.