Speculative fiction

Jun 2 2010

The Last Christian by David Gregory

There is something about David Gregory that keeps pulling me back in. I wasn’t a big fan of any of his previous books but decided to see how the author handled full length fiction in The Last Christian.  And I am glad I gave him another chance because this book turned out to be more interesting and entertaining that I would have expected. It blended suspense and philosophical and spiritual issues into an entertaining mix.

Here is the blurb from the publisher:

A.D. 2088.

Missionary daughter Abigail Caldwell emerges from the jungle for the first time in her thirty-four years, the sole survivor of a mysterious disease that killed her village. Abby goes to America, only to discover a nation where Christianity has completely died out. A curious message from her grandfather assigns her a surprising mission: re-introduce the Christian faith in America, no matter how insurmountable the odds.

But a larger threat looms. The world’s leading artificial intelligence industrialist has perfected a technique for downloading the human brain into a silicon form. Brain transplants have begun, and with them comes the potential of eliminating physical death altogether—but at what expense?

As Abby navigates a society grown more addicted to stimulating the body than nurturing the soul, she and Creighton Daniels, a historian troubled by his father’s unexpected death, become unwitting targets of powerful men who will stop at nothing to further their nefarious goals. Hanging in the balance—the spiritual future of all humanity.

For my take read below.

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By Kevin Holtsberry • Reviews • 3 • Tags: , , , , ,

Apr 4 2010

Between Two Kingdoms by Joe Boyd

Allegory – or even symbolism for that matter – is a tricky thing. Too obvious and people ask why fiction? Not clear enough and you risk confusion and readers missing the point. I wrestled with this fine line as I was reading Between Two Kingdoms by Joe Boyd.

Here is the synopsis from the publisher:

There is a land of two kingdoms, but only one true King. A living land, where foundations grow in trees and rivers sing and breathe. A dying land, where the darkness of a false prince threatens to swallow everything in its shadow.

Enter Between Two Kingdoms with Tommy, an eternally seven-year-old child of the Great King, as he and his friends accept the challenge of the Good Prince to live as grown men and women in the Lower Kingdom—where hope is hidden, vision is clouded, and pride twists truth into a beautiful yet deadly deception.

As the synopsis eludes to above, the basic story line follows Tommy as he accepts a mission into the lower kingdom. Setting out he knows very little about what lies ahead. Once there, however, it is revealed that the assignment involves stopping a plot to cover the entire lower kingdom in darkness and smoke in order to control and enslave the frightened  population. Tommy and his friends must protect as many people as they can and then find a way to destroy the machine that is creating the smog like smoke that begins to cover the kingdom.

You can get an idea of what the author was trying to portray and flush out in this short video.

To me the book felt either too simple or incomplete. It had the feel of a story you might write to experiment with ideas and symbols (and characters) – a sort of thought experiment in the form of a novella. And in this way it had some interesting aspects.

But as a work of literature taken as a whole it fell flat for me.

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By Kevin Holtsberry • Reviews • 0 • Tags: , , , , , ,

Mar 17 2010

Angelology by Danielle Trussoni

A week or so ago I promised as a service to my readers to referee the dueling New York Times reviews of  Angelology by Danielle Trussoni. Put aside the fact that one was technically in the New York Times Review of Books and the other in the paper – or the fact that they were not really side by side reviews – and focus instead on the very different reaction the book produced.

But first, let’s allow the publisher to introduce the book:

Sister Evangeline was just a girl when her father entrusted her to the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in upstate New York. Now, at twenty-three, her discovery of a 1943 letter from the famous philanthropist Abigail Rockefeller to the late mother superior of Saint Rose Convent plunges Evangeline into a secret history that stretches back a thousand years: an ancient conflict between the Society of Angelologists and the monstrously beautiful descendants of angels and humans, the Nephilim.

For the secrets these letters guard are desperately coveted by the once-powerful Nephilim, who aim to perpetuate war, subvert the good in humanity, and dominate mankind. Generations of angelologists have devoted their lives to stopping them, and their shared mission, which Evangeline has long been destined to join, reaches from her bucolic abbey on the Hudson to the apex of insular wealth in New York, to the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris and the mountains of Bulgaria.

This was in fact the blurb that intrigued me enough to read the book (generously provided by the publisher in this case). But the same book produced two very different reactions.

Janet Maslin calls it “a class-obsessed, scholarship-spouting, minutiae-strewn thrill ride that follows the ‘Da Vinci Code’ model as loftily as it can.”

In contrast, Susan Cokal: “Sensual and intellectual, “Angelology” is a terrifically clever thriller — more Eco than Brown, without the cloudy sentimentalism of New Age encomiums or Catholic treatises.”

So if I had to choose side in this debate who would I declare the winner? I would have to side with Cokal but I can understand where Maslin is coming from to a degree.

More below.

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By Kevin Holtsberry • Reviews • 2 • Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Aug 6 2009

John The Baptizer by Brooks Hansen

John The BaptizerRegular readers will know that I have long had an interest in fiction that touches on issues of faith and religion.  On the other hand, I don’t read a lot of historical fiction; for a variety of reasons that I won’t get into right now.

But despite the countervailing habits when I heard about John The Baptizer by Brooks Hansen I was immediately intrigued. Here is the publishers description:

Traditionally, John the Baptist is seen as little more than an opening act—”the voice crying in the wilderness”—in the great Christian drama. In presenting the epic of John’s life, novelist Brooks Hansen draws on an extraordinary array of inspirations, from the works of Caravaggio, Bach, and Oscar Wilde to the histories of Josephus, the canonical gospels, the Gnostic gospels, and the sacred texts of those followers of John who never accepted Jesus as Messiah: the Mandeans.

Gripping as literary historical fiction, and fascinating as a diligent exploration of ancient and modern sources, this book brings to eye-opening life the richly textured world—populated by the magnificently sordid, calculating, and reckless Herods, their families, and their courts—into which both John and Jesus were born. John the Baptizer is a captivating tapestry of power and dissent, ambition and self-sacrifice, worldly and otherworldly desire, faith, and doubt.

A straightforward historical portrayal of John might be interesting in and of itself, but the unique and creative mix Hansen offered put this one on the top of my reading list.

Most of the time the publishers blurb has an element of hyperbole to it – depending on the quality of the book in question this can be annoying or flat out deceptive – but in my opinion this one really does capture the book.

More on why below. Keep Reading

By Kevin Holtsberry • Reviews • 3 • Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Jul 28 2009

Erased by Jim Krusoe

cover_erasedI enjoyed Girl Factory, and am a fan of the folks at Tin House, so I was interested to read Jim Krusoe’s latest work Erased.  Here is the publisher’s description:

Abandonment, life, death, and, oddly, Cleveland are explored in the hilarious second installment of Jim Krusoe’s trilogy about resurrection.

In Erased, Krusoe takes on a dead mother who mysteriously sends notes from the beyond to her grown son, Theodore, the owner of a mail-order gardening-implement business. “I need to see you,” the first card reads. Theodore does what any sensible person would: he ignores it. But when he gets a second card that’s even more urgent, Theodore leaves his quiet home in St. Nils for a radiantly imagined Cleveland, Ohio, to track down his mother. There, aided by Uleene, the last remaining member of Satan’s Samaritans, an all-girl biker club, he searches through the realms of women’s clubs, art, rodent extermination, and sport fishing until he finds the answers he seeks.

This had me intrigued as I found the balance between absurdest comedy and philosophical questioning in Girl Factory entertaining and thought provoking. Plus, it satirizes Cleveland.  That alone has to be worth some laughs.

But for whatever reason, Erased didn’t quite work for me.  Erased is still the same blend of dream like states and all too real reality.  It still comes with a host of funny quips, entertaining characters, and absurd situations as Krusoe’s previous work.  And I enjoyed that aspect.

But it seemed to me that Krusoe turned up the absurdest and surrealist aspects of the novel to such a degree that the plot or narrative got lost.  I realize that perhaps the plot in the traditional sense wasn’t the point.  But for me there needs to be something that pulls the story forward and also causes it to cohere into something more than a collection of words; no matter how well crafted.

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By Kevin Holtsberry • Reviews • 0 • Tags: , , ,

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