The Sacred Sin

My apologies to Estevan Vega. He was eighteen years old when he sent me a copy of his second (second!) novel, The Sacred Sin, but I took so long to review it that I’m fairly certain he has to be at least forty-seven by now. The novel opens with its protagonist, Los Angeles detective Jude Foster, lying on the therapy couch and resisting every effort his state-appointed counselor makes at guiding him through the therapeutic process. Foster, after all, is a complex, brooding anti-hero who looks (or so we’re told) like Hugh Jackman, so no amount of talking through his problems is going to help him deal with his demons. Instead, he needs action, and when a spate of mysterious murders lead him to a face-to-face showdown with the devil himself (or, more accurately, Azrael, the angel of death), Foster learns just how far his spirit needs to sink before he can begin the long, hard work of crawling back to life. Though the prose relies somewhat heavily on adverbs to convey emotional impact, the story itself is taught and fairly complex, and I can easily see this book being made into a Hollywood film along the lines of the 1999 supernatural thriller The Ninth Gate. Vega has a natural talent for creating believable characters and imaginative situations, and I look forward to seeing more from him in the future.

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Fallen Nation: Babylon Burning - Review by Tom Powers

Yet another fine review from my friend and colleague, Tom Powers:

Fallen Nation: Babylon Burning (Mythos Media 2007) is the type of revolutionary fiction that may inspire you to take a visionary road-trip across the South-West searching for the America you’ve only heard about in rock ‘n roll songs or saw while under the hallucinatory influence of some illicit substance and/or the works of Philip K. Dick, Thomas Pynchon, Hunter S. Thompson, and comics instigator Grant Morrison. An impressive hybrid of words, illustrations, photography, pseudo-interviews, and one well-drawn comic strip, Fallen Nation: Babylon Burning’s storytelling both entertains and educates. The latter may immediately turn off the “I’ll learn when I’m in school, thank you very much” crowd, but author James Curcio is by no means preachy when he shares with you his knowledge of philosophical concepts. The author, after all, who holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Bard College, is creatively applying his education to his fiction. Not to digress, but it is not very often that we see a writer effectively reap the fruits of a liberal arts education through the lens of prose as Curcio successfully has done with a confident understanding that intelligent ideas, both classical and contemporary, still have a voice and meaning applicable to perhaps the last undiluted and uncensored of print mediums – the novel.

In terms of clearly drawn narrative lines between hero and villain, Curcio does not, thank goodness, offer easy, predictable answers. Instead, he intricately crafts an atmosphere of intrigue and paranoia via secret governmental agents who are unclear as to the identity of their true masters and ex-asylum inmates, rock stars Babalon, who are on the road as they head toward a literally explosive gig. Fallen Nation: Babylon Burning is also not afraid to transgress boundaries as it challenges our assumptions of morality, sexuality, and nationalism. If all of those facets have not yet intrigued you, however, the character of Lilith herself, the enigmatic, consummate seductress and lead singer of Babalon, will justify the time you devote to consuming this rewarding read.

Then there’s Curcio’s dialogue – sharp and cracking – the perfect complement to his lyrical prose, philosophical ruminations, and innate understanding of what drives the essence of the American dream – our shared love of its sometimes-alien landscape, which exists geographically across its states and internally within all of us who chase that dream and continuously struggle to grasp its ever-shifting definition.

For lovers of wild sci-fi, intriguing concepts, not to mention sex, drugs, guns, and rock ‘n roll, Fallen Nation: Babylon Burning, accordingly, is the apropos new-millennium text that will awaken the sleeping counter-culture beast within.

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Craven Deeds - Review by Tom Powers

Once again, my sincere thanks to renaissance man about town, Tom Powers, for contributing the following review.

A neuroscientist by trade living in San Diego, author Heather M. Elledge, in her debut novel Craven Deeds (Infinity Publishing 2008), crafts a fantasy world that is paradoxically familiar and unique. This assessment itself could be criticized as sounding trite, but, once you’ve read Elledge’s work, you’ll see that this statement honestly captures the tone of her writing. The author begins her tale with the freshly orphaned Carla attempting to adjust to her new ostensibly mundane existence living with her wealthy grandmother Hanna, whom she’s never met hitherto now due to familial estrangement. Hanna, however, with a subtle wink-wink to the audience, is not as simple and boring as Carla believes the woman to be as she introduces her granddaughter to an object Carla’s mother once owned – an old snow globe. On this side of reality, the globe appears as a nostalgic remnant of Carla’s mother’s childhood – but this is the world of fantasy; consequently, the globe becomes the magical catalyst that propels young Carla on a quest accompanying a gnome rescue party as they go in search of their kidnapped King Ruben.

Elledge then rapidly introduces a world that echoes well-revered fantasy tropes –quirky creatures, ancient royalty living in mighty castles, dark, mysterious forests, and treacherous mountains. Elledge indeed applies these fantasy traditions in her writing, but the novelty in this first-time writer’s approach to these elements is the sense of joy she brings to her world-building. Along these lines, she offers such creations as gongors – a sort of fantasy horse – and sand pouches that represent a gnome’s soul married with magic. She also taps into contemporary fantasy reader needs, in a manner similar to the cross-genre short stories found in last year’s Bad-Ass Faeries collection, by combining adventure-fantasy with murder mystery in a successful recipe for continual page-turning on the reader’s part.

Despite enjoying Craven Deeds’ brisk-paced narrative, I must confess that Elledge’s ending leaves me wanting much more, as the story’s tantalizingly unfinished by the novel’s end and certain characters remain underdeveloped and their motivations unexplained. Of course, there’s an apparent method to Elledge’s circumvention of these necessary storytelling elements – she’s wisely committing trilogy, assembling the narrative scaffolding for her projected “Gnome King Trilogy,” the second part of which she has already begun composing. For this reviewer, then, the literary expansion of Elledge’s world awaits…

Available September 5, 2008, from Infinity Publishing.

-Review by Tom Powers


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Sound and Noise

As a rule, I don't read books on my computer screen. The strain on my eyes gives me a headache, and there’s something about holding a bound volume in my hand that’s simply too intoxicating to give up for the cold, lifeless experience of interfacing with a machine. I say all of this not so much to rail against technology but to underscore how much I enjoyed reading Curtis Smith’s new novel, Sound and Noise. My admiration for his storytelling skills (see, for example, his wonderful book of short stories, The Species Crown) was enough for me to bend my hard and fast rule against reading novels on my computer just once, just for him, but it was his gift for imagining characters and their settings that kept me coming back for more--blindness and aesthetics be damned!

The novel presents the parallel lives of two characters for whom heartbreak is no stranger. Tom is an artist who pines away for his comatose wife while life ostensibly passes him by. Jackie is a former backup singer in a classic rock band whose life has settled into a rut that consists largely of tending to the bar she inherited from her family and prowling the aisles of her local grocery store in search of the meaning of life. Or love. Whichever comes first. Bereft of joy, both characters struggle with loneliness and its various cousins—depression and despair, chief among them—only to find hope in each other and, perhaps more importantly, in the flaws that make them so human.

While the basic premise of Sound and Noise may sound a little gloomy, Smith is as adept at tackling weighty subjects with a light touch as he is at breathing life into his characters. Indeed, it’s the “extras” in the world that the protagonists inhabit that make their struggles not only bearable but ultimately so enjoyable. The small college town Smith envisions is teeming with well-meaning if not always reliable compatriots for Jackie, and despite ingesting mind-altering substances on the least opportune occasions, Tom’s friend Blaine, an otherwise down-to-Earth novelist approaching middle-age, gives the proceedings an atmosphere not unlike that of a classic buddy-film.

Granted, I’m a big fan of Curtis Smith, but I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that this is a wonderful work of fiction that will allow even cynics (such as myself) to find a deeper appreciation for the day-to-day miracles inherent in every life. Available soon from Casperian Books, Sound and Noise is a winner.

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Alive

Weighing in at 95 pages and typeset in what appears to be 14-pt Times New Roman, Alive by Jeffrey Murray (Trafford 2007) follows the efforts of a young African-American male to “understand blacks, whites, the whole universe, and how it is designed to intricately work together.” Early in the purportedly true story, Murray-as-first-person-narrator writes, “Thursday, twenty years ago, a rage of pure hell was ignited within my mental capacity from racial broadcastings of black people struggles in America.” As the book progresses, Murray takes the reader through a number of racially-charged incidents that helped to shape his attitudes toward race, life, and the universe: moving from school to school, interracial romance, violence, bigotry, the death of a family member, and a personal near-death experience. Throughout this very short memoir, Murray punctuates his life-story with footnotes explaining the greater significance of each incident. This strategy produces an interesting result: two narratives running almost simultaneously, one depicting events in the narrator’s external life, and the other charting his emotional and intellectual growth. Overall, Alive is a quick read that offers an interesting and personal glimpse into the mind of a young man coming of age while exploring the significance of race in America.

Theatre of Incest

Once again, my good friend Tom Powers, co-author of The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, is helping me out with a review. This time around, the book is titled Theatre of Incest. Hmm...

Alain Arias-Mission’s short novel Theatre of Incest (Dalkey Archive Press, 2007) presents a man who indulges in a lifetime of incest with his closet female relatives. As an apprentice being introduced to the dark art of incest, the narrator learns the ropes of control and submission from his mother – a delineation chronicled in the first part of the novel. In the subsequent part, we witness how the narrator takes on his own incestuous apprentice – his daughter – and initiates her into a world of unbridled, graphic sexual acts. The final part then shows our sexually intrepid narrator find a strong counterbalance, both mentally and physically, in the form of his sister, whom he deems his “sweet witch.”

The term “witch” appropriately channels the tone of the novel, whose back cover copy calls a “primeval fairy tale” that “burns with icy passion.” To be honest, Theatre of Incest is a read best suited for lovers of poetic language, and, more importantly, for readers who honesty possess open minds. Arias-Mission’s words dance on the page as his narrator shares his life with us – sans dialogue or multiple perspectives. This approach could lead some readers to wonder if the narrator is indeed an unreliable one – but the author’s words are so seductive and the twisted, erotic world he crafts so beautiful and shocking, that the reader will often be caught up in the flow of events instead of wasting too much time judging the man.

Since Arias-Mission’s approach to his subject matter does not pretend to pass a moral verdict upon his narrator, or hint that the man’s actions are in any way mitigated by mental illness, one may seek to understand why he wrote this book. Perhaps the author is inverting Freud’s tired-and-true “Oedipus Complex” in a working metaphor applicable to our contemporary, complex family relations. Instead of repressing sexuality, a la Freud, in an emotional mishmash with his mother, daughter, and sister, the narrator, then, freely transgresses these boundaries in his attempt to understand these women better. However, in the absence of sexual repression, jealousies still arise, and the eternal power struggle between men and women is continued on a sexual stage Arias-Mission at one point literally presents as exhibitionist theatre. Likewise, he may be telling us that the various roles we may hold in our life as children, siblings, and parents will always confuse and delight us in manner that is more intimate than our most intense sexual relations.

Just as Arias-Mission does not offer easy answers concerning his character’s actions, it is probably fitting that this reviewer refrain from further trying to theoretically troubleshoot this sexually and emotionally daring novel.

Review by Tom Powers

The Contractor

Charles Holdefer’s latest novel, The Contractor (Permanent Press 2007), opens with a single question that drives the entire narrative forward: Who are you? Posed by a prisoner in a Guantanamo Bay-style secret prison, this seemingly simple question haunts George Young, the novel’s narrator, and forces him to take a long, hard look at how his life has led him to a career as a civilian interrogator for the U.S. government. More importantly, perhaps, this question allows the reader to move far beyond headlines, political rhetoric, and theoretical generalizations about the use of torture to extract information from suspected terrorists and, instead, paints an intimate portrait of one man’s participation in the vast machinery that utilizes such techniques to gather information. In so doing, Holdefer forces us to recognize that wars aren’t fought by nations, but by individuals.

Significantly, very little of The Contractor takes place in the remote prison where George Young works. Yes, Holdefer does a superb job of bringing the details of George’s work situation to life, but the real power of this novel derives from the author’s exploration of the title character’s familial obligations. Forbidden from discussing his work with anyone outside of the prison, George has grown distant from his wife and children by the start of the novel. Indeed, as his wife slips into a haze of alcoholism and his children become increasingly mysterious to him, George’s most intimate acquaintance is with the family cat. Add a struggling brother, a crotchety father-in-law, and a claustrophobic holiday visit back home to the mix, and George’s life becomes a dramatic tangle of self-doubt and confusion. And, needless to say, his dogged efforts at untangling the deeply intertwined knots of work and family drives the novel forward to a searing, shuddering conclusion.

To put it bluntly, The Contractor demonstrates why the novel will always be a viable art form and why the small press is so important to keeping that art form alive. The novel, at its best, places the reader in the skin of the protagonist and allows the reader to understand the world from someone else’s point of view. As such, it removes us from our comfort zones and causes each of our worldviews to shift as if on an axis, if only for a brief period of time. Yet in that time when we inhabit the bodies of strangers, their struggles become our struggles, and the world becomes new for us. We emerge from the experience changed and look at the world through new eyes. This process, of course, is not always comfortable—hence the need for the small press, the press whose concern is not with providing mass-market thrills so much as thoughtful transformation. It is, however, always enlightening.

Like all great literature, The Contractor provides such enlightenment and then some. It does for the war on terror what Don DeLillo’s Falling Man did for the terror attacks of September 11, and what Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried did for the Vietnam War. It avoids saying "here's the story" and instead says "here's a story." And in giving us a story, the novel brings its subject to life in a way that is both disturbing and beautiful. As fascinating as it is moving, Holdefer’s novel is not to be ignored.