Author: Desmond E. Berghofer

Publisher: Trafford Publishing

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 1412065046

Antale (pronounced An-tal-ee) is an allegory. Written in the tradition of Animal Farm, though with no political message, it explores humanity's challenge at the start of the 21st century to find the collective spiritual enlightenment that has eluded us through the millennia of known history. Antale is the world of the ants. It is a delicate, precious place-a crater world surrounded by the vastness of the Rim, an endless expanse of desolate rock across which faint signals of intelligence reach in tantalizing, mysterious wavelengths, detectable by listeners on Mount Opportunity. Antale is not a peaceful world, though several leaders of its major colonies have dedicated their lives to creating a peaceful federation. These efforts fall apart when aggression and treachery spearheaded by the Red Ants plunge the whole world into a Great War. In the second year, when wisdom should have grown out of experience, an uneasy tension envelops the collective consciousness. Technology and expansionism begin to push the ant civilization to its limits. The one dim light of hope lies in a bold attempt to raise a new generation filled with a new consciousness, born in the whisperings of the universal life force carried through the biology of the Queens in the great brood chambers of the nests. In Year 3, the world of Antale is pushed to the brink of collapse as social folly and natural order exact an unremitting toll. This message arrives just in time to strengthen the fledgling spiritual renaissance that steps forward at the end into its rightful place, and allows the crumbling leadership of the old order to find new light. Beyond its carefully measured message, Antale is a crackling good story, moving along swiftly through tension filled events created by the highs and lows of characters whose predispositions to greatness and folly are readily recognizable.