The Five Of Us Pawns

An Early book by Kylie Poole.  She would later elucidate, expand, and illuminate the alchemical subtext into the whole of her work.  The book itself suffers from a lot of first time author errors.  It's badly paced and not all the characters work.  Some are more obviously puppets of the authorial voice, though critic Bernadette Bauldrere contends that was on purpose.

The plot of "the Five of Us Pawns," involvese the Murrhy Quints.  The five brothers are now adults leading very seperate lives.  They have grown up thinking they hate each other.  One morning they all wake up to a different world.  They find that they have all been leading secret lives unbeknowst to them.  Moreover, they have had a lot of contact with each other and seem to have been working on some unnamed overarching goal.  As the Quints gather again to piece it together they are subject to horrific dreams involving a demonic version of themselves named "Amon."  Only with the help of Carrolyn Creule, a psychologist and anthropologist from a Jungian school, do the Quints piece it together.

The novel is about self realization and transformation.  Only when they become aware that they are pawns to this Amon can they change things, but it is only when Carrolyn joins them that they can transform (alchemically?) from helpless pawns to deciders of their own fate.  While at the end they destroy first Amon and then the more powerful Crom Crolech, it is not as the book end a satisfying victory.  They have lived their whole lives as puppets.  Now they have to forge new identities.  As Michael Murrhy says at the very end: "I look into the five faces that mirror my own in form and dispassion and I know I should say something, but nothing comes."