Michael Herman (3)

I read this novel because the first book in this series was very good (Aliens, Tequila & Us; Messenger’s Soliloquy, 5 Stars – recommended) and I hoped this would be more of the same, but that wasn’t my impression. It’s by a good writer and maybe that’s the thing because I wonder if he’s trying to personalise the style and extend himself just a little too much for the audience to keep up. It is fairly unique and perhaps I wasn’t ready for that style and needed to be eased into it.

This story is mildly confusing to me, but that seemed deliberately so and I’m not convinced there was any entertainment advantage in telling it that way. To explain that, to link the feeling to a comprehensible equivalent in our world, I can imagine an opiate daydream might include the sights and sounds of reality, the cruelty and loss too, but it would be harder to make out what’s solid and what’s spiritual willow the wisp. It’s like dressing one thing up in the other to distort the focus of the reader’s attention.

I wasn’t entirely sure what was going on with the messianic character for a long while, until it became clearer toward the end. Was the harm that this character had suffered (a future event – the tense affected by time travel) a nod to the suffering of early religious figures? Did they have any great wisdom or a cause to propagate or does the pattern recognition we feel from a purification through suffering give them any moral authority? It took a while for those answers and his powers to be revealed satisfactorily and then at least there was a futuristic dystopian angle to it which helped me to understand why the character fits in this genre. Stories should reveal themselves gradually I suppose. Was this too gradual though?

There’s another central character called Kinshasa, which sounds slightly off-key to me because that’s a city, but I guess people do share names with places sometimes. Still though, it’s rare to find anyone called London, Nairobi or Moscow, unless I’m being unfashionable? Isn’t that right, Sydney? We’ll always have Paris. I’m defeating my own argument here, so I’ll drop it.

This book also has a sub-plot that’s quite melancholic (the child soldier legacy) and makes a reasonable point about how we should never again allow life to become so cheapened. However, the inclusion of this element dampens the level of natural fantasy escapism in the novel, in my opinion. I normally enjoy the uplifting sense of escape you often get by reading sci-fi and fantasy. In this, when you get to the global alien presence (a huge, deeply rooted and eternal consciousness), the reader should be thinking “What a cool underground jellyfish idea! Holy tendrils! That explains the course of human history! Love this book!”, it’s instead just a slow pick-me-up from the previously instilled sad mood, like going down to the refugee help centre and asking people what happened to them, so it isn’t easy to light up your brain and go euphoric over anything after that. The first book was equally full of artistic imagery but the difference is that followed a clear arc and positioned the reader pretty much on the edge of their seat for several hours and I think that’s the feeling writers should aim for, especially when they’ve already shown they can do it.

In summary then, this is reasonably unusual stuff and an entertaining slice of thinking-person’s fiction but my view is there could be slightly too many fantasy elements to grasp all at once and still keep your mind on the plot, plus the mood needs adjusting up one notch on the dial. The writer does have a powerful imagination and that alone is worth a recommendation. The tale is a slippery fish though and I (with other members of The Hard of Thinking Society) will hopefully be forgiven for feeling it should have been spelled out to us more than it was, earlier on.

Having read this now, I felt some affinity for the character discovered wandering aimlessly around in the desert without much sense of where they are or what’s going on. That’s the reader, that is. Then again, I acknowledge it’s a good book, so what was my problem? I’ve analysed this for a good, long while (hence the longish delay before writing a review) and I think I can see what’s happening – and it isn’t the author’s problem, it’s ours. This is quality fiction without resorting to formula. People like reading formulaic works as sensing what’s going to happen and where the plot is heading is a comforting feeling, a sense of control. This author has been brave and artistic enough to do away with that lazy approach and try something alternative, strange, positioning it as more unique. That attitude is really the only way we’ll ever get to read anything genuinely original, different in creative structure, something to challenge us and keep our minds alive, so I have to applaud the bravery shown here in attempting to push back the rules. The fact that I got a little dazed and introspective shows I’ve lost the unconformist sense of twenty-something delinquency needed to get the best out of this novel and that’s something I hadn’t realised until now. Shit, it’s me isn’t it? It’s not the book. I’m turning into the thing I hate the most – my suburban parents with their sensible shoes. Help meeeeee…… (meer)

I thought Aliens, Tequila & Us: Messenger’s Soliloquy was a really good science fiction fantasy, engaging from the start, well-composed and with no slack passages. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the picture on the cover as that reminded me of David Niven’s hippie version of Casino Royale but it made sense when I read it. On first impression, the page count seemed lower than usual for a novel but after reading it I can see this was also about right. The first image that I found abstract and haunting in this story was the circular henge within henges of agave plants radiating out from the tequila farm, like living tomb stones but also advertising perfectly to any onlooker what the place was about, a kind of throne on a hill, ringed and cloaked with acolytes, all laying their lives down for tequila. Now that’s abstract. Tequila is surely no greater than one percent of importance in proportion to anything else (medicine, moonlight, fried eggs, Tuesdays) in most people’s lives but here it is everything, everywhere and unescapable, in the very fabric of place. It’s as if a species of plants had decided to go to a conference, or offer protection to something they revere, like a vegetable shield. What a scene to set up the context. The other beautiful image is that of the glowing biological entities (worms) which swarm over, up and around visitors. There’s something tingly, exposed, a touchy feely very personal sensation about this handshake of two species, so I felt if it was a real thing, the morality spoiling crew would quickly find a way to ban it. The characters were pretty interesting too, from the over-capable mother to the enamoured sixteen year olds and then, of course, the cooperative individuality of the aliens which gives them a kind of heat-seeking, team-tumbling-over-an-obstacle-course personality. The idea that an alien ship has been hanging around long enough to have influenced our ancestors (e.g. Stargate) has been tried but in this case the pro bono meddling is occasional and subtle, dropping thoughts into heads, so I loved the suggestion that a certain religious figure might have been an unwitting stooge of an extra-terrestrial mind (and that’s how he got his wings). What an unusual explanation, just as likely as any other you might suppose. I don’t think I liked the taste of tequila when I tried it, so maybe they only export the basic stuff, or it clashed with my toothpaste. It’s also a tale set in the middle of nowhere, the desert badlands, so it was a welcome bonus to read a story that doesn’t rely on the police or army taking over from the original group and giving them a cheap, formulaic way out. Altogether, I thought this book was a top read, soaring easily above the congested average, and I can see this author has sent me two from the series for review so it seems very likely I will read the whole lot even if I have to buy them. This one is definitely recommended for entertainment value and as an example of well written fantastical science fiction. Like string soup to a Clanger, if you lend this mind candy out to a fan of the genre, you won’t get it back.… (meer)