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Hereafter Lies: R.I.P.
In this grim contemporary science-fantasy, the Hereafter has been colonized, but persecuted ghosts start pushing back. Featuring an OwnVoices LGBTQ/Neurodiverse protagonist.
Like any Omega agent, Deja Vale’s directive is to contain those ghosts hell-bent on ensouling the unborn to rejoin the living. He’s also an Odd. Unlike his teammates, Deja can enter the living world—unmasked—and see past the fog cloaking it from nonliving eyes. Apart from prompting puns and pop culture deep cuts that nobody on his team appreciates properly, his Oddity takes its toll.
But Omega South’s already fallen and Omega North might be next. Agents are spread thin and Odds even thinner. Though Deja’s barely recovered from the mission that lost him half his team and half his memories, he’s sent back to the field—haunted by the fear his history of hallucinations makes him a liability to the few teammates he has left. Which is fine! He’s fine. No hallucinations around here! Gordon Ramsay gives ultra-specific ghost-fighting and risotto-seasoning advice to all the nonliving girls through the TV, this is all just fine.
Deja’s team is dispatched by ever-shifting train to police a cross-section of American Possessed parrots, Victorian murder-children, crazed Canadian clowns, and man-eating forests. Between it all, they discover a pattern. Someone is teaching these ghosts to fight back. But when Deja’s hallucinated warnings save his team more than once, he realizes those messages might be real, and his “hallucinations” a sign of memories waiting to be recovered. Only, the price of getting those memories back—and the truth of how his first teammates were lost—might just be the destruction of Omega North itself.
Someone is counting on it.
Like any Omega agent, Deja Vale’s directive is to contain those ghosts hell-bent on ensouling the unborn to rejoin the living. He’s also an Odd. Unlike his teammates, Deja can enter the living world—unmasked—and see past the fog cloaking it from nonliving eyes. Apart from prompting puns and pop culture deep cuts that nobody on his team appreciates properly, his Oddity takes its toll.
But Omega South’s already fallen and Omega North might be next. Agents are spread thin and Odds even thinner. Though Deja’s barely recovered from the mission that lost him half his team and half his memories, he’s sent back to the field—haunted by the fear his history of hallucinations makes him a liability to the few teammates he has left. Which is fine! He’s fine. No hallucinations around here! Gordon Ramsay gives ultra-specific ghost-fighting and risotto-seasoning advice to all the nonliving girls through the TV, this is all just fine.
Deja’s team is dispatched by ever-shifting train to police a cross-section of American Possessed parrots, Victorian murder-children, crazed Canadian clowns, and man-eating forests. Between it all, they discover a pattern. Someone is teaching these ghosts to fight back. But when Deja’s hallucinated warnings save his team more than once, he realizes those messages might be real, and his “hallucinations” a sign of memories waiting to be recovered. Only, the price of getting those memories back—and the truth of how his first teammates were lost—might just be the destruction of Omega North itself.
Someone is counting on it.
412 pages, Hardcover
Published June 8, 2024
About the author
Elijah B. Wilder
1 book5 followersELIJAH B. WILDER writes things—mostly blurbs like this. Otherwise, he's wandering around cemeteries at the crack of dawn in search of mushrooms and answering awkward questions from concerned locals. Then he's asking the caffeine-deprived officer ‘what he looks so grave for,’ and digging himself deeper until he awkwardly blurts out, "I'm conducting an ecological survey of residual arsenic from 19th-century burial sites!” which, while not wholly untrue, is also a lie, and this not wholly-untrue lie lands him in a city planning meeting in a capacity he is in no way qualified for: professionally or spiritually. As you may have gathered, he’s got a great deal of all-too-specific knowledge on Victorian death practices and mycology, and makes it everybody else’s problem. His parents would like him to let you know he has a Ph.D. in philosophy, but the truth is he spends very little time philosophizing, and way more time begging his dog to please, please just come inside, and trying to remember what the hell he came downstairs for anyway.
If you know what the hell he came downstairs for, please contact him on his website. Or here. Or Ouija board. Or particularly industrious/well-trained pigeon.
If you know what the hell he came downstairs for, please contact him on his website. Or here. Or Ouija board. Or particularly industrious/well-trained pigeon.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 2, 2024
Thoroughly enjoyable! I was dropped into a reimagined Hereafter and the author does a wonderful job introducing elements of this new world in right-sized bits through some very engaging characters.
The characters are the best! Our hero, with all his complexities, is an n-th level pun-master. I had to stay on my literary toes to make sure I always, “saw what he did there”.
I am thrilled to say I do not recall reading a book where the dialog was so smooth and natural, the author has obvious talents, but has a true gift for dialog. The “Stephanie Interaction” early in the book hooked me.
By the end, you know you have a lot more to learn about the Hereafter, but so does our hero, and the thing we share is the knowledge that something is really wrong!
Elijah B. Wilder, thank you for a great read!
Highly recommended. Bring on Book 2!
The characters are the best! Our hero, with all his complexities, is an n-th level pun-master. I had to stay on my literary toes to make sure I always, “saw what he did there”.
I am thrilled to say I do not recall reading a book where the dialog was so smooth and natural, the author has obvious talents, but has a true gift for dialog. The “Stephanie Interaction” early in the book hooked me.
By the end, you know you have a lot more to learn about the Hereafter, but so does our hero, and the thing we share is the knowledge that something is really wrong!
Elijah B. Wilder, thank you for a great read!
Highly recommended. Bring on Book 2!
September 23, 2024
A law enforcement organization from the afterlife sent into the world of the living to fight malignant ghosts before they can seize the bodies of new borns? Oh yeah, sign me up.
I love this book on so many levels. Not the least of which is that it is the first book of a series so I get to look forward to many more of Deja Vale's adventures and commentary on the afterlife and the desert of the living, as it's called in this amazing debut novel by Elijah Wilder.
It's a fascinating mystery and a look at the afterlife as a place of mind numbing bureaucracy. It's also funny as hell and that is a rare gift in a writer. The characters, particularly the protagonist, are interesting and appealing, and I am eager to read more to find out what's behind Deja's memory loss. What did happen in that school? Wilder manages to create an unreliable narrator who isn't irritating because his confusion that he expresses to the reader are earned and there is a reason for all of his questions.
Highly recommended.
I love this book on so many levels. Not the least of which is that it is the first book of a series so I get to look forward to many more of Deja Vale's adventures and commentary on the afterlife and the desert of the living, as it's called in this amazing debut novel by Elijah Wilder.
It's a fascinating mystery and a look at the afterlife as a place of mind numbing bureaucracy. It's also funny as hell and that is a rare gift in a writer. The characters, particularly the protagonist, are interesting and appealing, and I am eager to read more to find out what's behind Deja's memory loss. What did happen in that school? Wilder manages to create an unreliable narrator who isn't irritating because his confusion that he expresses to the reader are earned and there is a reason for all of his questions.
Highly recommended.
August 28, 2024
This was a fun, engaging read. Vale offers comedic relief amongst some seriously tense moments, all while trying to hang onto his sanity. Wilder has done an amazing job of bringing the other world to life, so to speak, and changing how our world is perceived, when it's seen through the eyes of the unliving. There's a sense of urgency, not only to the team stopping ghosts, but Deja recovering his memories. Those memories are the thread running through everything, and pulling you forward as bits of the otherworld and the bureaucracy that inhabits it, functions, is revealed. I love how everything is revealed slowly, and although I don't know anything about this unique place and organization, I don't feel lost either. There are no information dumps, so nothing gets overwhelming. Cannot recommend for occult fantasy lovers (who aren't afraid of evil ghost clowns).
October 12, 2024
What a delightful train ride through the beyond. Clever, tongue-in-cheek (gideon the ninth wants what this book has), and mysterious.
The characters we spend time with feel nicely fleshed out and really carry the weight of their past with them in a way that feels tangible and effective to the story.
Deja Vale, our POV character, is snarky and dropping quips like some kind of ghostly spiderman, but it never feels like too much, nor does it distract from the other events going on.
I maybe wanted a few more answers by the end of the story, but my understanding is that those will come with subsequent additions to the series and I enjoyed this book enough to trust the author to deliver those when the time is right.
Can't wait to see what whacky bullshit Vale and his Squad Ghouls get up to next time.
The characters we spend time with feel nicely fleshed out and really carry the weight of their past with them in a way that feels tangible and effective to the story.
Deja Vale, our POV character, is snarky and dropping quips like some kind of ghostly spiderman, but it never feels like too much, nor does it distract from the other events going on.
I maybe wanted a few more answers by the end of the story, but my understanding is that those will come with subsequent additions to the series and I enjoyed this book enough to trust the author to deliver those when the time is right.
Can't wait to see what whacky bullshit Vale and his Squad Ghouls get up to next time.
September 19, 2024
I really enjoyed this book. It made me late to work a few times when I lost track of time while reading in the morning! Great puns, and the characters have a bit of an "edge" to them, which makes them feel real... You gotta love Omega Agents masquerading as angels to save people from killer clowns! The mission to the vet's office was "Mwah!" . Still some questions left at the end, so I can't wait for the next book!
February 23, 2025
this was a strong start to this series, it had that element that I was hoping for from the description and was engaged with what was happening. Elijah B. Wilder has a strong writing style and left me wanting to read more in this series.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews