Illusions II: The Adventures of a Reluctant Student Illusions II: The Adventures of a Reluctant Student Illusions II: The Adventures of a Reluctant Student is the 2014 novel by writer and pilot Richard Bach. The first "Illusions" book was published in 1977 and was an international best-seller, telling the story of a pilot who encounters a messiah who has absconded from the "job" of being a messiah. ("Illusions" was the author's followup to 1970's "Jonathan Livingston Seagull".) The sequel is in author Richard Bach's voice, as his "imaginary" literary characters help him in his recovery from his real-life plane crash. After decades of flying without incident, author Richard
Richard Bach to the Ground (1963) described the deployment to France of his Air National Guard unit, and was well reviewed, for example by Edmund Fuller in the Wall Street Journal. In 1970, "Jonathan Livingston Seagull", a story about a seagull who flew for the love of flying rather than merely to catch food, was published by Macmillan Publishers after the manuscript was turned down by several others. It had been first published, free, in SOARING, the monthly magazine of the Soaring Society of America. The book, which included photos of seagulls in flight by photographer Russell Munson, became a number-one bestseller.