Mercurial Vision

He thought he was going to die in that tragic fire, but Mercer Janus is revived with his entire outlook on life thrown into doubt. Death for him offers no heaven, pearly gates or God, but instead a void of nothingness, leaving him terrified and questioning his beliefs. Struggling with the grief of losing his wife to irreversible coma, on top of his dwindling faith, Mercer turns to desperate measures to prove there's a God and an afterlife. Through the encouragement of a mysterious, carefree girl named Harmony, and fuelled by the miraculous vision of self-righteous author, Edmund Hickory; Mercer sets upon a path of whimsical destruction to provoke God into revealing himself to the world. As his journey becomes erratic, and the depravity of his actions grow, Mercer is forced to ask himself how low will he stoop to get an answer to the one question haunting him: is heaven really waiting for us?

Mercurial Vision is the debut novel of Francis Benedict Carlson, a satirical dark comedy set in England that explores a nihilistic struggle with sentience and the search for meaning beyond life. Blending dark humor and existential dread, it challenges the boundaries of faith, morality, and the human desire for answers in a universe that might be indifferent to our existence.