Weekly Reader: The Love of The Tayamni (The Love of The Tayamni Series Book 1) by T.A. McLaughlin; Complex Science Fiction Series Begins in Outer Space, Ancient Egypt, and 1960's Mississippi

 Weekly Reader: The Love of The Tayamni (The Love of The Tayamni Series Book 1) by T.A. McLaughlin; Complex Science Fiction Series Begins in Outer Space, Ancient Egypt, and 1960's Mississippi

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: T.A. McLaughlin's The Love of the Tayamni series is complex in theme, narrative structure, and world building but the complexity is what makes it memorable. 

The first book, The Love of the Tayamni, offers an introduction to the overall narrative, story arcs, and characters. Millions of years ago, a species of cyborg humans were forced to leave their home galaxy because of war, disease, and apathy. A group called The Nine or the First Ones brought them to a new world to save their  people. That world is revealed to be Earth and the Nine have names like Osiris, Isis, Nut, Sekhmet, Hathor, and so on. (You might have heard of them.)

The beings that arrived on Earth are called The Tayamni. They  spliced their DNA and taught sacred languages with species that were on the brink of extinction.  Many Earthlings in fact have Tayamni ancestry.

 Many of the Tayamni settled in Kemet AKA Egypt and are human in appearance. They are very spiritual but technologically minded. They believe in reincarnation believing that the body, or ba, dies but the spirit, or ka, will be reborn as is projected for their deceased Matriarch.

Because of their technological advancement, the Tayamni also have far seeing abilities which allows them to see potential destruction in the future and to travel through time into the future to fix the problem. This occurs after the Matriarch dies. Her ka is foreseen to be reborn in the 20th century to a male child who will reconcile both his masculine and feminine sides into a being that exists beyond gender. This future Matriarch will lead the Earth into a new age of peace and spiritual prosperity. 

Unfortunately, the Tayamni also see an alternate timeline in which another alien human hybrid species, the Potacas are going to kill the reincarnated Matriarch as a small child. So the late Matriarch's daughter, Batresh is assigned to go forward to 1960's Tupelo, Mississippi to protect the future Matriarch who goes by the name of Denny Shields. 

Meanwhile, Batresh's husband, Amun, sister, Namazu, and other colleagues are investigating other leads that could bring catastrophic consequences in this timeline that occur on other parts of Earth like Yellowstone National Park, Charleston, South Carolina, and Vietnam. The leads concern another species,The Tlaloc that are also bent on destroying or controlling the planet and are working with or controlling the Potacas to achieve those goals.

The world building that goes into creating The Love of the Tayamni is well crafted with amazing detail. The Tayamni are dissected through their interpersonal relationships, social structure, morality code, and their overall impact with the Earth and their home world. Their species combines ancient spiritual beliefs with futuristic technology. The Tayamni's  connections to Earthlings becomes beneficial for both. The Tayamni are able to preserve their dying race and humans are able to adapt and evolve thanks to the Tayamni influence.

The theory of aliens coming to Earth centuries ago and becoming involved with ancient cultures is almost a joke or a meme now. However, McLaughlin presents a book that not only explores that possibility but does so in a way that becomes believable. 

The Tayamni have a code in which they cannot harm others. However it is not absolute and some like Batresh are told that they can go against the code to achieve the larger picture. This becomes more complicated when the Tayamni reveal themselves as ancient people who still need to learn and that  code is questionable when the enemy wears a human face.

The conflict and themes make the series complicated but McLaughlin wisely limits the first volume to Batresh's experiences. Through her, McLaughlin shows a woman raised as a human with no memories of the home world questioning her existence when her family tells her that they are from another world. She questions her identity and even more so when she is given the task of protecting the future Matriarch (who remember was once her mother but is now a small boy).

While in the 1960's Batresh questions her identity and purpose. She is mated to another Tayamni, Amun, and like all Tayamni is polyamorous. When she meets Jerry, a Mississippian who helps her protect Denny, she has to reconcile her Tayamni lifestyle with her developing human emotions for him. 

Batresh has to struggle with more than the Potacas and Tlaloc who want to do away with the future Matriarch and by extension the future. She has to accomplish her assignment in Mississippi in the grips of segregation during a shameful time of hatred and prejudice in which the Potacas and Tlaloc feed off of. They use that hatred to influence and control humans to do theit vile works for them. Of course in reality, we don't need alien species to commit hateful deeds. On Earth, there are many who are more than capable doing that on their own.

The Love of the Tayamni eases the Reader into the more difficult far reaching complications in the subsequent volumes without insulting the Reader's intelligence and pulls them into the immediate story. It is the first easy step into an increasingly more difficult but 

well written universe.