Kalpa Imperial

This collection of short stories chronicles the Greatest Empire that (n)ever was, a sort of fictional history about a fictional empire that remains true to South American style fantasy worlds. Rather than load it with monsters and dragons and legendary heroics, it shares relatable common heroes/heroines in their all-too believable world that mirrors ours, or at least a universe we recognise as something that actually exists. South American fantasy worlds like those created by Gabriel Garcia Marquez are never so unbelievable that you feel it is difficult to get into the story.

Argentine author Angelica Gorodischer is no different. Though some of the history is a thinly veiled sarcastic commentary on greedy, despotic rulers and the problems with monarchs who hand down the reign to the next generation of poorly raised high-born tyrants, many of the stories involve on the philosophies of the outsiders: story-tellers, noblemen, rebels and workmen and peasants and their impact on the various Emperors.

The second to last story I found very interesting, it involved an individual who escaped the Empire and its reach to head south, the South, if you will, where savages live in small villages and have none of the benefits/drawbacks that the folk living within the Empire receive. His quest is one of escape and survival at first, but takes an inadvertent turn and becomes a quest for knowledge. There are some prophecies and other nonsense, and eventually the Empire comes for him and all hell breaks loose in a few pages; but what I noticed about this short story is how closely it mimics the plot of Robert Silverberg’s Nebula Award winning novel A Time of Changes (1971).

I don’t wish to make this review too A Time of Changes­-y but I will say that it is a fantastic novel. A lot of egoism and hence, individuality, has been banned from the states that make up the empire in the civilized North. A drug that opens minds (this novel came out the same year as my favourite movie, Vanishing Point, also about individual freedom and rampant drug use, and I don’t believe that is by mere coincidence) and teaches people the of love, comes from the uncivilized Southern continent (no silly, it is not a sci-fi Colombia, or Kolombya or anything like that) and after using it regularly and realizing he just does not fit into his society, the protagonist loads up on drugs and begins expanding people’s minds. He makes almost a diplomatic mission of it, not so much to change the culture but to share love with the people he cares about. After getting into some majour shit for this, he fleas for the south to live with the natives down there, score some hallucinogens and live in the desert until, alas, the Empire comes for him.

They sound similar, do they not? Well something about that sort of world, that sort of treachery and intrigue sets up an enjoyable atmosphere for me in both stories. And the writing styles by the authors are sufficiently different, with different worlds and different characters with varying purposes that each story is unique, despite my trying to make them sound like the same thing. I am also glad I read A Time of Changes first because I would hate to have started that book and then, 60 pages in, gone “ah wait, I know how this one ends.”

Some of the stories in Kalpa Imperial are actually weak; they just cannot all be winners. But the good ones are very good and the universe in which it takes place is at least consistent and consistently interesting, and very well thought out. I would recommend this book to any casual sci-fi/fantasy fan, but since there is no hardcore magic or monsters I would be hesitant to get LOTR nerds or sci-fi space alien loving nerds into it. Great read though.

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal (a novel)

Long title. Not a very long book considering it covers Jesus’s life from when he is 6 years old through to that point in his life when they made that movie The Passion of the Christ. 31, was it? Whilst not crazy about it, I think overall I really liked it (the book I mean), but of course I cannot just simply say “I like it” or “dislike it” because I am just not cut out that way.

I would say this was otherwise a pretty damn funny book. And the reason I would not say no to a book of this caliber is because I listened to it on Audiobook. I have been doing Audiobooks for a while now and they help break up the nasty, grueling drive I make to reach Phoenix every other weekend to see my lady and on other occasions, hockey team. I keep track for my purposes which of these reviews I Audiobook, and the prior review of The Drawing of the Three I was listening to, a gory enough scene to make me not want to drive listening to it anymore, forced me to turn it off and when I looked up BAM! Car accident. So I switched to humorous books instead, like this one. And well, here is the review of that.

Getting to the meat of the book, this was a very blasphemous story about reviving Levi so he could write a gospel about Joshua (a much better translation of Yeshua’s name) as he spent nearly every moment by his side growing up, through adolescence and into adulthood. Levi, who is called Biff, is an extremely loyal yet crude, unsophisticated simpleton with a foul mouth and a temperament for blasphemy. The story primarily involves their quest for the Three Wise Men at Joshua’s birth, which we learn are a Magician, a Buddhist and a Hindu Yogi. Joshua and Biff spend years with each, and each person teaches him more about how to become the Messiah, whilst he more than masters what they have taught him and in much less time than anyone expects.

Biff, during all this, is helping Joshua by continuing to be an example of what he will never be, a true debauchery fanatic and the only one with vice and terrible qualities enough to bail Joshua and him out of trouble. Most of this is really fun, and when not fun, blasphemous (which is as good as fun, most times).

The twists of what Joshua learns from these people and how it applies to his miracles he performed in the Bible are an extension of the humorous-blasphemy I enjoy. The idea that Jesus learned all that we associate with his mystical side from pre-existing sources by consolidating different aspects of Sun-Tzu, the Bahgavad Gita, Tao Te Ching, Diogenes’’ Cynicism and various other philosophies, is just great to me.

Still, not a great book in my opinion. Felt like it was great when Joshua spends time with the last Yeti, and the jokes that Biff has about that creature, but the end came a bit abruptly and was a bit too unbelievable for my liking. Really, the final scene comes out of nowhere and is completely unnecessary. And what is supposed to be the takeaway from it? That if you serve Joshua as a means to his ends you all get second chances? Unless his other friends didn’t like you? Really the bit about Judas and how it ties into the resolution/conclusion left me a bit confused.

Anyway, if you like to laugh and love blasphemy, it is worth reading, but I do not otherwise have too many great things to say about it. Good enough, I suppose. I will leave you with one last bit of religious history that always makes me chuckle, fan art from an African on Jesus.

The Drawing of the Three – The Dark Tower: Book Two

 Very discontinuous from my post on Book One: The Gunslinger, sure, but review that one if you need to, because I wrote this one shortly thereafter and it follows a similar style and train of thought. Here we go:

Well now this is more like it. I recall saying something along the lines of

“Besides, I don’t dislike all of his work, I just find him a bit too bizarre and gory for me sometimes; really drawing out the scenes that are intended to make one uncomfortable but don’t add much, if anything at all, to the story.”

And guess what? It happens…but not in such a way that I can’t enjoy the story overall. The truly horrible thing (he is a “horror” novelist, right? Even if these aren’t particularly scary books) is that it happened at a particularly odd time. Being a man who doesn’t believe in coincidences, I have to say this may be an event that will stick with me for a while. How it happened was that I was listening to an Audiobook of this story, narrated by Frank Muller and using my Audiobook application on my smartphone as I traveled to Phoenix from Safford to watch a Red Wings game.

Stephen King’s “Kinginess,” wherein he describes the gruesome crime that leads to Odetta Holmes losing her legs above the knee after being pushed in front of the A-train in NYC, was more gore with less plot-relevancy than I felt I should be putting up with during a narrow canyon pass through the most dangerous part of my drive. I promptly switched from Audiobook to music on my smartphone, and as I did, there was an accident ahead of me. The details of this accident relate more to another story, which can be found at another blog for which I sometimes stop by and write. And that story blossomed to even more unexpected, stranger-than-mere-coincidence, deeper relationships. Very strange, to say the least.

I think for that, this book will always be looked upon strangely, and fondly. To get away from what happened in my life as I went through this story, it was very much fun. Eddie Dean was a very enjoyable character and his rite of passage from drug mule in his world to sidekick of the Gunslinger was well done, and at times fun to cheer along with. Odetta Holmes/Detta Walker, not so much. But the drawing of the third one made it all better.

And of course, how can I recap this story without mentioning the giant, bloodthirsty lobsters? Does Stephen King really hate lobsters? Being a native Northeastern US celebrity and representative of that region, I can imagine. But maybe the man had nightmares of them when he was a kid. In any event, the narrators take on their psychotic questioning (“Dum-a-chum? Ded-a-chek?”) makes me laugh everytime I think about it. It was perfect.

I also really enjoyed the gunslinging in this book. Whether it was his threats, a blasting of a human-hungry lobster, killing off people from Eddie Dean’s world or doing his thing with ammo and drugs in Jack Mort’s world, it was always entertaining. And Jack Mort represented a typical Stephen King villain to me, and I’m glad he wasn’t in there long enough to ruin the book for me. A sociopath who gets off causing serious injury to people…and yes, I mean actual orgasms when he does. Very King-y, I should think.

But there’s a great plot development with him at the end, and great character development too, pulling everything together and preparing you for the long, difficult journey onwards as they leave the coast and head up into the foothills on their quest for the Tower. Not much is said about the Tower in this book, but with the Man in Black gone, it’s not as though any one here knows that much.

Needless to say, I liked this book more than its predecessor and if the third one is half this good, I’ll enjoy it as well.