My review of Space by James Michener

   It’s remarkable how downright prophetic this book has shown itself to be. It’s a brick, giving a detailed, partly fictionalized description of the early days of the Space exploration.

  A parallel story, however, explores the evolution of knowledge and science itself, and this is just as important as the main story. Lots of time is given to a typical evangelical, science-denial and plain fact-denial hustler. Seeing how extensive that worldview has grown today, Michener was certainly ahead of his time.

  Even literacy is criticized today for opening people to communism. «My grandfather was illiterate, and he remained anti-communist his entire life».

  Michener chooses a theme or a geographic area or similar, and writes a brick of a story about that, spending years in research, and he does it well. His style may feel a little dry, but it works. His storytelling is detailed without being boring. The paperback version is a brick with over a thousand pages, and even has small fonts. Each page is a story.

  Right wingers will detest the book. Openminded people will find it very interesting.

Review: Your Own Fate by Amos Keppler

   This came to my attention ten years ago, through a review at Amazon. I had read a few of Amos Keppler’s novels, like The Defenseless and Dreams Belong to the Night before that. It was an easy sell. I feared my expectations were too high, that I was bound to be disappointed, but I wasn’t.

  It starts off with a bang, and works itself up from there.

  Jeremy Zahn, a hunter of men and former British policeman, arrives in Los Angeles after a long, exhausting hunt of Timothy Joyce, an international fugitive that has become his archenemy. Zahn is a driven man, obsessive in his zeal, frustrated by his incomprehension of what’s going on, unable to understand the motivation and often baffling actions of his enemy.

  The story begins in Los Angeles, but also in London years before, successfully moving back and forth between the present and the past. Zahn is pretty much a typical, dull lawman during that time in London, one that hasn’t really pondered the hidden depths of the world. He’s forced to do that repeatedly during the three years of the hunt. Joyce seems to be his superior in all important ways, but Zahn refuses to be give up, following the other like a bloodhound never letting go of the scent.

  Who is really the prey and who is the hunter is open to interpretation, though.

  This is Amos Keppler’s shortest novel, but it feels much longer because it’s packed with details. You need to catch every one of them, or you might miss an important clue to what is actually happening. I didn’t realize what that was until the last few pages. It was still a great payoff, or perhaps a great payoff because I didn’t know. But when I read the book for the second time, and knew the basic story, I still loved it.

  It’s a complex story to end all complex stories, a tales of the unexpected to end everything unexpected. I predict you will be as stunned as I was when you’re done reading it.

 

Review: The Fury by John Farris

  This is another classic horror novel. It made Farris a household name after the release of the Brian de Palma movie in the seventies. That was long before I was born or could read, but it reached me through the grapevine of an eager reader. I searched endlessly for challenging and daring material, and this was one of the earliest I found.

  It starts off as an action-story, but quickly moves away from that, into far more satisfying waters. It isn’t a horror-story, not really a genre story at all, and I quite simply love that, love that, too. John Cassavetes played the sinister highly placed government man in the movie, but he had lots of great original material to work with. It is no hero-story. The reality in the story come off as quite cruel and gritty. In a typical Hollywood story, the boy’s father would have succeeded in his grim mission with flying colors, but he doesn’t. The boy and the girl are the main protagonists, even though it doesn’t look that at first. There is no moral here, or if there is none, it’s far different from the usual boring, mainstream stuff.

  We are presented with a reality beneath the somewhat pleasant daily existence where there are no rules, no mercy. We are drawn into a world of agents and victims, and both casual and deliberate violence. Powerful people want to become even more powerful by exploiting an emerging power, but this power is both beyond their understand and reach. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio. The before mentioned highly placed government man realizes that to his peril.

Deep waters

  Indie author Amos Keppler's novel ShadowWalk is, among many great things a celebration of multiculturalism.

  What makes Amos Keppler's books unique compared to all others is the uncanny vision he brings to his work. I have read about half of his works by now, and even though the novels are vastly different from each other, they share that unique quality of being different.

  The visual power he brings to his stories is unquestionable. Others have related how they are able to easily visualize what they read in his books. I agree!

  But what the stories are about more than anything is the deep waters of humanity. You haven’t experienced truly deep in books until you read this one. At least I hadn't.

  The story is about Jill, a young woman, among other youths of all colors and many cultures on a quest to find herself and get a life, about her getting it, finding everything making life worth living. It is found under a rock, right before her eyes, and she grabs it, grabs its tail with both hands and holds on to it with all the considerable might she possesses.

  It’s about the dangers seekers find out there, on the freedom road.

  It’s about the mysteries of human existence and everything under the moon, actually. I would argue that it is about everything and contains everything, but that would not be completely accurate.

  It’s one hell of a book and you will find yourself immersed in it, deep below the surface of its waters, its fire lake.

  I wouldn't claim that each paragraph is a joy to read, but it feels that way. The prose is just as unique as the story itself.

  The boys and girls described in the book are teenagers, but this is a story for truly mature readers of all ages. It is a fantasy book. It is not a fantasy book. You will find no boxed in genre story here. You will find life in all its shades.

  No less.

The dismal quality of the Young Adult genre

  I don’t enjoy any genre as a rule, but Young Adult is truly raising my ire.

  Mixed with Romance, as it often is (the two are joined at the hip) it becomes an absolutely horrible experience.

  How anyone can enjoy this crap is beyond me.

  It is teenager’s life diluted, clouded by a thousands filters of censorship and misdirection, totally empty of reason and passion both.

  There is no sex, no violence, except off camera and nothing even resembling real life.

  I read LJ Smith when I was ten and couldn't (still can’t) believe the genre she practically started has become so popular. I must «confess» I've never more than browsed Stephanie Meyer’s books, but I read more than enough to form an opinion and it’s worse than its reputation. I forced myself to read Dark Flame by Alyson Noel, just to see if it ever amounted to anything.

  It never did.

  That was supposed to be her darkest story? Ridiculous! If she wrote for Christian grandmothers perhaps (perhaps she does).

  To my fellow young adults enjoying or pretending to enjoy this shit I have only one thing to say: up yours!

  In a world where stale and unexciting storytelling is dominant, this genre is truly the bottom of the barrel.

  I want to read and enjoy completely different stories. This quote from a review I agree wholeheartedly with:

  "ShadowWalk is a powerful tale of magick and empowerment which manages not to sound like a mind-body-spirit-self-obsessed-hippie book. This is full-on reality. Blood and sweat and shit - nothing's toned down or dulled. The intensity of life comes through strong and meaty. Real life bursting off the pages".

  Review in Green Anarchist (the original and best) No. 68/69 Summer 2003.

  This is a story about teenagers, but it is so far removed from the YA-genre it is possible to come. The quote says it all, really. ShadowWalk operates on a completely different level compared to the mainstream shit we are fed continuously today.

Do you know?

  In a survey of children using the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking this was the result:

  At age four 84% of the children tested as highly creative.
  At age eight 67% of the children tested as highly creative.
  At age twelve 34% of the children tested as highly creative.
  At age seventeen 12% of the children tested as highly creative.

  Something needs fixing and it is not children.

A novel extraordinaire

This is a review of the novel The Defenseless by Amos Keppler.

Today’s bookstores are filled with mediocrity, with the dreary and trite. Potential monetary value or narrow, very narrow cultural considerations more than resembling censorship rule what’s published or not.

Or… at least that was how it used to be. Now, when the age of POD (Print on Demand) and self-publishing has arrived in earnest, the future suddenly looks much more promising.

Three qualities were usually lacking in times past, often because of those reasons of monetary value and considerations mentioned above. The story is mostly missing in works published through traditional means, genuine penmanship and daring, controversial content as well.

If you by a miracle should find one, you won’t find the second and certainly not the third.

The Defenseless has all three.

Like others have pointed out the first chapter reminds me slightly of Metamorphosis by Kafka, but after that all resemblance to anything else vanishes completely. It becomes a blazing trail of originality, of life and realism jumping from the pages. Reactions from people reading a Keppler novel is usually one of two extremes: either you love it beyond measure or you dislike it intensively. One can understand that. It goes straight at the jugular of modern human life, exposing it for the hollow sham it is.

Ted Cousin, his brother and sister and cousins, and those who would be his friends are all strange birds in the present day human society, alienated from it and from themselves in ways wide like an abyss, desperate for some kind of connection, understanding. But the connection remains out of reach. Understanding eludes them.

As the story progresses the crack, the abyss widens to a horrible degree.

I love it when art tells me something straight up, and still leaves depth and texture, and this novel does. It is first and foremost an engaging story, but goes so much deeper than most stories, on so many levels of complexity. After a couple of chapters where the author has taken you beyond anything you’ve ever known or understood, you feel he can’t take you any further on that beyond passionate and desolate road, but he does, until the absolutely devastating, slamming in the face end. One cannot help being affected by it, pulled into its irresistible maelstrom. I read it in two hectic days and nights, and I sat there sweating afterwards, stunned, a wide range of emotions and questions raging through me.

That’s how I want to feel after having read a novel.

Coming up

A lot of interesting stuff about the less known parts of human existence.