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In a world divided by a genetic catastrophe, a monk and a former thief are linked by a sacred object that holds the key to a global cure.
The presence of a holy icon that bridges the gap between different eras and fractured timelines defines the world of M.D. Dixon’s IKONA. The story follows a diverse group of people as they are drawn into the artifact’s mysterious field, leading to a convergence that is both fated and determined by choice. It is an exploration of how memory and healing can transcend the limitations of linear time.
A holy icon in the form of a Russian Orthodox cross surfaces throughout history, possessing a healing power that remains unexplained. Four strangers are drawn into its resonance, their journeys taking them from the bustling centers of Sydney, Hong Kong, Atlanta, and Berlin to the silent ruins of a future Siberia. In Atlanta, Kate Davies watches as the icon affects a sick child, while in Sydney, Finley Minor is haunted by visions of the weight of the future. Jia Li MacPherson, a former thief, carries secrets that powerful entities seek to bury. A century ahead, Wallace Deng Moroz, a monk in a world nearly ended by a genetic engineering catastrophe, searches for a cure in a dangerously polarized society.
Their paths are destined to cross, but the outcome depends on their choices. They must decide which future they are meant to live in and what must be surrendered to reach it.
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FINLEY & THE SEA
MAY 2019
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
Finley Minor was by his own accounts an empty man, a listless man, spiritually and emotionally sparse. Blink a thousand times and his course in life would not have shifted an inch. He was motionless like a chameleon in the presence of a threat. But this was not fact, only fear, and that of a man who knew that he’d not lived at full throttle and had succumbed to the fate of it —a slow and shallow life. He ruminated on it. He judged himself for it. He laughed at his own expense, without thinking he might ever change a thing.
In the way one always has a beginning, a great excuse, this was Finley’s: at the age of seven, in his native England, he sat on the beach as his stick wove tessellations in the sand (almost of its own accord, it seemed in retrospect), and he looked to the horizon towards France with the open, impressionable curiosity of his young age. He wondered at the sea’s depth, its great distance, how one might (as many had) swim across the channel, what creatures might lurk there, what they might feel like against bare skin. He imagined something slimy and cold, fanged, and slithering. The waves seemed to roar at him, even though they descended in the rockpools with the gentleness of pooling cream.
He stood, determined to satisfy his curiosity. He took halting steps over the rocks and shells, straight ahead, then bearing left around a rock face that jutted into the sea. He sat on a big, flat rock and stared into the gray water. He heard his father calling out his name, but ignored him. The water rushed in again and again, and each time reached further and further, first sucking at his toes, then his heels, then his knees. His curiosity fled; he became afraid, and all sound was magnified, the dull ocean roar, the seagull squawking a few feet away, his heartbeat. He knew he had to go back to shore. He waved to his father, stood, and took a faltering step. There was a low murmur; the water fizzled once more in retreat from the rocky sand like the gasping breath of a dying man. He felt dizzy and fell to his knees. He crouched on all fours and steadied himself as the water swirled and grasped at him, and the sky looped and the clouds fell from the corner of his eyes. He felt his head winched back towards the horizon, and the sea reached for his throat. Blackness.
When he came to, dragged back to shore by his father, he announced that his aunt would never return from her Côte D’Azur holiday. He wagged his finger towards the surf and pulled a face, “Over there, there is smooching.”
The official prognosis was that he’d had an epileptic fit, though none of the tests proved it. He must have passed out, in that case, the doctor pronounced, low blood sugar, a low-level virus, dehydration.
But Finley knew, only he knew.
The ocean had rent a hole in his soul, and let in the future.
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M.D. Dixon is a novelist, somatic therapist, and explorer of the intersections between the psyche and the sacred, science and mysticism, trauma and transformation. Holding a Ph.D. in the social sciences with a focus on Russia and Ukraine, Dixon has spent nearly fifteen years in therapeutic practice in Sydney, Australia. Dixon’s debut novel, IKONA, weaves visionary fiction, myth, and metaphysics to illuminate the evolution of consciousness. Dixon also hosts The Shattering Place, a podcast on multidimensional healing and the awakening human story, launching in early 2026.
Visit M.D. Dixon online.
Additional tour coverage is taking place today at Long and Short Reviews and Chapter Break
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