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The Soul’s Journey: Test To Destruction
Forbidden: The Awakening by Samantha Sommersby. (Linden Bay Romance, 2007.) When I started studying fiction writing, I learned one sure way to draw readers into a story; test a character by boring holes through his/her personality all the way to soul’s bedrock—to test to destruction in blood, sweat and tears. Lately, I’ve learned that Edgy (Hollywood jargon like High Concept) means to tease the reader/viewer with the threat of violating a taboo, the suspense of whether satisfaction will be delivered. This is a kind of Tantric Yoga perpetrated upon an unsuspecting audience and is necessary to sell a script to Hollywood. In between, I learned how the fiction and games we entertain ourselves with become endlessly fascinating because they replicate the karmic shape of life itself. Think about these three processes. Taken together, don’t they remind you of various ceremonial initiations? Testing to destruction—the fear aroused in the candidate before the door opens. I won’t run. I’m going to do this! The symbolic journey of the candidate—right up to the edge of reality. Will the coffin open, or will they leave me here? The investment with the symbols of success. Now I’m really a member! To venture onto the path of initiation is to offer yourself as bait to what you fear most. Reading books about fears, hopes, destruction, taboos can help you integrate the insights of initiation into your life, but won’t solve any of your problems until you can see how your life is a story. How do you respond when life tests you to destruction? Are you a hero? A guru? Are you cool? Or are you a nerd, a geek, or a shmuck? Test yourself on this edgy vampire series, Forbidden: The Claim, which I reviewed in March, 2007, followed now by Forbidden: The Awakening, with Forbidden: The Revolution yet to come, all from Linden Bay Romance which has made a reputation for itself in edgy romance. Like many Romance and Vampire novels, The Awakening uses graphic sex beyond what used to be taboo in the field and boldly goes beyond even that. In Forbidden: The Awakening, the vampire/human sex awakens a supernatural life-or-death bond between them. The vampire attempts to “disappear” from the vampire community by wiping out his identity so he can join his human lover. But the vampires track him—because he’s their financial wizard. He retaliates by stealing all the money in their secret bank accounts. They capture his human lover. If she dies, he dies. He stages a rescue. Guess who the oldest vampire in the world is? The first vampire who has spawned all the others? The most powerful one that they must begin a rebellion against? It’s Cain—the original brother of Abel. Now there’s an “edge” for you. Stephen J. Cannell—the famous TV series producer who created and produced a long list of my favorite shows—has a very script-like novel , The Viking Funeral, from St. Martin’s Press. It is the graphic deconstruction (test to destruction) of the integrity and self-respect of detective Shane Scully and some of his cop buddies. It all starts when Scully sees his best friend, Jody Dean, alive and well—but Dean committed suicide three years ago. Murder, conspiracy, betrayal, police corruption (power in the hands of broken souls), all of this is edgy. This book is pretty mundane, but it illustrates the test to destruction, the Tantra of edginess, and how the game is actually shaped like life. For a refreshing dip into plain Science Fiction, try C.J. Cherryh’s Deliverer, ninth in the Foreigner Universe series. I love all of her novels, but this series has nailed me dead center. Not only is Cherryh testing a human, Bren Cameron, to destruction (sexuality and self-image), she is breaking two societies open all the way to their souls’ bedrock—a human colony and a native society. Now she’s adding a third species to the mix, forging a strange reconstruction of an alliance between human and atevi to meet the strangers. A young atevi, heir apparent, has become an escape artist, transgressing every taboo his parents establish as he grows up under the influence of a human with a sense of humor. This installment in the series sketches the characters and situation which will no doubt explode in the next trilogy. Here a civil war among atevi is settled, Bren’s brother avoids capture by the atevi usurper and acquires a new attitude while forbidden tech is left on atevi soil with the new aliens about to come visiting. I believe all her aliens! The Kris Longknife series (Mutineer, Deserter, Defiant, and now Resolute) by Mike Shepherd is likewise a refreshing SF romp. If Robert Heinlein were a young writer today, this is the sort of book he’d write. Kris Longknife is a woman born to high station in a stratified society. Like any young scion of a ranking family, she joins the “Navy” (space navy) and expects to be treated as a commoner. In previous novels she got a reputation for prevailing against all odds. Now her family tests her to destruction by sending her out to the border to face an invasion nearly single handedly and without a budget to hire an army. She believes she’s being protected to death, or punished. She teeters on the edge, breaks many taboos, falls in love, and prevails anyway—you’ll never guess how or against what, or with what reward! I highly recommend this series. S.L. Viehl’s new Stardoc novel, Plague of Memory, picks up the Stardoc tale as Dr. Cherijo Torin (a “meta human” superhero who isn’t a fantasy character) creates herself a new personality in the absence of all memory of her previous existence. But to save a species from extinction by a disease, she has to retrieve her own memories and dig up some better-forgotten details of an alien species’ history. The previous novels in this series tested Cherijo to destruction—now we see the reconstruction and it was worth the wait. Absurd things from previous novels now turn out to be plausible. However, the main plot takes a back seat to the affairs of the main characters, resulting in expository lumps disguised as dialogue because the background is very complex. On the other hand, that makes this novel remind me of the Lensman Series by E. E. Smith. Alastair Reynolds Pushing Ice evokes the spirit of humanity tested by an invader from outside the solar system. The writing is awkward, as if the writer doesn’t know how to splice scenes together, so the characters trudge between scenes spouting expository lumps. But there’s romance and adventure—and SF galore. It becomes a page turner. Janus is a Two Faced God by Susanne Marie Knight is likewise not up to my standards, technically, but tells the story of an interstellar Olympics competition held on our Moon. The human woman must (despite falling in love and being too old and injured) win the zero-G Gold to prevent Earth from being invaded. I don’t believe the aliens. Susan Grant has a delightful and edgy Romance titled My Favorite Earthling containing some serious angst and character testing—some destruction and some explosive growth triggered by real romance. It’s a silly situation taken past the taboo line—and I don’t believe her aliens either. A human male gets trapped into a marriage of state to save Earth from invasion—then falls in love with his alien bride. You will believe it if you can believe in a human male who wants to love his wife and stay faithful to her. Stargate SG-1 (the final episodes aired in Spring 2007) and Stargate Atlantis are prime examples of the test to destruction that reveals the truth. In Stargate SG-1, the team is out there alone against the Ori—ascended beings bent on dominating the galaxy. In Stargate Atlantis, the team is out there exiled from Atlantis while the Replicators (scourge of Earth’s galaxy last season) take over Atlantis. In both instances, characters driven to the edge dive over that edge. In Atlantis, for example, the weakest character’s gullibility is used against the enemy by planting false information in his mind—tricking him. It works against the Replicators—and even fools us. In SG-1, Daniel Jackson, without authorization for the risk, sticks his head in an Ancient device and gains Merlin’s memories—gets captured by the Ori, then claims to have forgotten it all. What’ll they get out of him? Hinterland by James Clemens is a fantasy world presented like an Arthur C. Clark tour of the solar system. Again characters trudge through every scene, stop for no discernable reason, and spout exposition. However this series is about an old topic I thought had been done to death in the 1960s, the destruction of gods. It’s a hit series that breaks the old taboo against overly complex backgrounds.
Send books for review in this column to: Jacqueline Lichtenberg, email jl@simegen.com for instructions. |
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