What if the devil and the damned met not as desperate, world-weary adults, but in the wide-eyed days of youth?
Elea’s innovative debut novel plungers the reader into the mayhem and madness of such a collision, as the pair fight each other, and yet together, against the universe itself. There are as many ways souls can be saved as there are souls.
When a self-sabotaging young man, by himself hated, and a self-deifying young woman, by the world demonized, are flung together they can only try to survive in spite of the threats surrounding, and the danger they pose themselves – and beyond that: to survive well. And the thrill of magic, family loyalties, and supposedly-fated doom intensify this already turbulent world all who have been young can recognise. Led by teenagers characters, ‘Careless Thoughts Cost Minds’ reaches far beyond those years, speaking to all who have known the thrill and terror of youth, and who have the pride to sense that though faces may line that doesn’t mean vibrancy and vitality must fade from hearts.
A tale of eyes widening, minds expanding, the novel immerses the reader in the same experience, with a liberated philosophy urgently overdue. A warning: it will leave you at the end far from the same person as the start. You may want to say your farewells to your old self before you begin.
To be uncertain and confident, godless and ecstatic, to reply to a harsh universe with a laugh to douse stars – all is an option, and even the wrecked and the weak can learn. When everything is declared meaningless, it becomes limitless – and that open space can be filled with glory just as legitimately as sadness. But to laugh in the face of an empty universe seems an impossible skill for some. Then again, all seems impossible until it is done.
