In constant development since 2007… The Elements is a cross-genre series of fiction
The series works with multiple timelines and is a unique and ambitious project, still in the making and aiming to break new ground in fiction. Set for release in 2016, The Elements works with a blend of real and fictitious events of the twentieth century, populated by archaeological discovery, the fight for freedom, the deeds of heroes and anti-heroes of the past. Based in the recent past of the 1980′s and using years of research, the series transcends the deeds, mysteries and conflicts of the most devastating century in the history of mankind.
Working with a blend of real and fictitious events, each book is part of an intricate puzzle using extensive research to create a thriller-noir series like no other.
About The Elements
Europe is moving towards a final confrontation, except, none of the ruling elite can see it coming. The fall of the Berlin Wall is not anticipated, the powers behind the scenes still busy building webs of deception. There are also invisible forces working behind the scenes in a race to maintain a balance of power. Except, none of the lethal and manipulative game of puppet masters is understood by the agents out in the cold, caught within an intricate web of intrigue and deception. Caught in the game, to find the way out, they have to discover the past the powers will go to any length to keep hidden.
Read more about the Series Background.
Conceptually, each book takes thematic identity from a predominant element: Earth, Air, Fire & Water. Perception and understanding of the whole can only emerge as elements are combined, revealing through their combination the hidden battle of soon-to-be-redundant masters no one really knows anything about. Each book follows the efforts – often in vain – of the main characters forced to navigate through their respective worlds of chaos. The use of the elements as a thematic concept becomes more literal as the series unfolds.
Accessing higher and deeper levels in society from the estates of nobility to the underworld of subterfuge and deception, each book features a different tapestry of characters and their personal stories, some familiar, some new – all the while revealing more details of an intricate back plot.
The Elements introduces a multi-layered story universe submerging the reader into a rich and complex world of discovery at a time near to the end of the cold war.
The front story is set 1986-1988, following the pre-sequence of events in the wake of a macabre discovery of a murder victim in the Tiveden National Park in Sweden. The Elements draws on a vast pantheon of characters, covering a timespan of over six decades – from the years immediately before the fall of the Berlin wall back past the hidden deeds of the second world war and farther back in time. Working with four timelines, each book examines a different element in a growing perception of reality.
Grounded in Nordic mythology, secrets of archaeological discovery, the fight for freedom and the past deeds of the forgotten, names turned to stone; elements of the history of the 20th century are revealed to uncover a past we never knew existed.
The Elements combines the above with a mythological perspective with roots going back to the First World War, the socialist and national socialist causes in the 30’s and later, on the very real crimes committed in the name of the doctrine of blood and soil. The discovery of a hidden game of deception and the revelation against the odds of political and moral corruption in contrast to the little known and unsung personal – often heroic – deeds of the resistance generation.
In The Elements the protagonists find themselves caught in a sideshow, struggling to make sense of a macabre and disturbing world they become an unwilling part of that challenges their perceptions of truth and reality: A product of the greater schemes of power brokers shuffling for position, as the invisible lines drawn sharply between Eastern and Western Europe’s secret organization’s head inexorably towards dissolution at the end of the cold war in the years 1986-1988.
Geographically, The Elements has scenes based in Egypt, London, Copenhagen, Rome, Berlin, Denmark, the Baltic region, the hinterland of Sweden, Istanbul and Eastern block Rumania. Click on the timeline on the right to find out why…
The Elements by Mark David 