By Wehttam Tropapar, October 2023

Cult of Aten, the highly anticipated capstone novel in the Foreign Agent series is out, and this one is different!

Book one (Foreign Agent) and book two (Foreign Agent the Last Chapter) are closely related. The final setting in the first book (Bangkok), and its characters, carry through the entirety of the second book. The “Cult of Aten” is introduced in the second book where its infrastructure begins to be built, but the novel ends before it is finished and launched.

Book three takes us back to the U.S. where its author, having published the second novel, receives a thumb drive from Bangkok containing the code for an elaborate website along with an image. As with the other novels, Cult of Aten is written in memoir style, this time explicitly as a diary begun in 2028 while Matthew lies in a hospital bed recovering from an assassination attempt–no spoilers here, this fact is noted in the first chapter. The bulk of the novel (everything through Chapter 19 of 22) is Matthew catching the reader up to all that happens from the autumn of 2023 when he launches the Cult of Aten, to his present–in the hospital–in 2028.

Except for five chapters in its middle covering a single [important] week spent in Mexico the pacing of this novel is much faster than the first two. This is necessary because the third novel spans five years compared to two years for the first and only one for the second. It is also consistent with Matthew’s claim (in 2028) that this catching-up was drafted in two weeks from his hospital bed. It is a result of this “catching-up” and explanation that Cult of Aten can be read as a stand-alone novel. Yes, the story is enriched by the first two novels–especially the second–but they aren’t strictly necessary. The reader is not lost without them.

What would a novel from Matthew be without sex? It’s here in plenty, but there is a change, Matthew says a “literary advance” on his part. While still explicit, the sex (with one exception “because it was unusual compared to the rest”) is softened around the edges. The exceptional detail Matthew is otherwise known for is absent, most of the time. Interestingly, this is also consistent with the story’s pacing.

So how does a text written in 2028 come to get published in 2023? Two words: time travel! You’ll just have to read the story!

All in all, in my opinion, this is the best of the three books. I asked Matthew what gave him this idea. What he said was: “The first novel’s insight was ‘what if the Chinese offered to pay me for my opinion.’ The second novel’s was ‘what if there was more than one alien spaceship and the other didn’t crash?’ This novel, the third was ‘what would happen if the Cult of Aten (first invented in novel number two) and the books really took off and became a global phenomenon?’”

What’s left of the real Cult of Aten can be found on Matthew’s WordPress account here: https://ruminations.blog/cult-of-aten