'Sweet Unpleasant Realities' charts the journeys of Matthew Benjamin Harkfel and a coterie of characters that are each embracing their own visions of personal freedom. Matthew is "seventeen years old, an orphan, a prodigy, a celibate, if such a title could be applied at seventeen, and in his words, 'the dissonant note of karma.'" His failed suicide attempt brings him into contact with philosophy professor, Stephen Danielson. Stephen chronicles Matthew's journey across a spiritual landscape of magical realism, and into Xenoria. There, the mysterious and enlightened Djela initiates Matthew into the liberating customs of her people. Matthew's world dissolves in a series of breaks with reality, as he plunges into mental illness. Matthew must choose between the world of the nothing-space, or enter the thin space to experience the 'future that awaits.' You are invited into a world in which the reader will be shocked and soothed. 'Sweet Unpleasant Realities' is for the courageous.