A sometimes-inaccessible collection; the metaphysical tales shine when they stick to allegory.
Rahal offers a collection of short stories and spiritual contemplations addressing God, creation, and the day-to-day distractions that distance people from these ideas.
In another galaxy, the company U-Dream Inc., develops photon-based computers—mind-reading machines that blur the lines between games and dreams and make any fantasy seem real. But NIAM, the artificial intelligence that U-Dream employs, has been infected with a virus that snares its users in a nightmarish world while stealing their memories. The only hope is the company’s specially trained group of operatives, who seek to reveal the falsehoods of NIAM’s parasitic fantasies and awaken those trapped. The collection’s eponymous story is accompanied by others depicting those who fail to challenge perceived truths, including “A Pit Stop,” which features a lone seeker trapped in a hellish, absurdist pit reminiscent of The Divine Comedy(“As you reflected on your situation, your ears picked up the reverberations of wailing howls and piercing shrieks. These seemed to come from the far depths of the tenebrous cavities of the pit”). The fantastical explorations of the concepts of God, creation, fear, and self-control focus on the importance of questioning those in power who maintain illusory systems around themselves and others. Along with these original stories are retellings of parables about figures both real and fictional, including Bar Daysan and Baba Yaga, as well as essays, letters, and a hymn. Rahal uses simple stories with straightforward morals, often set in timeless places, and the characters and settings are mostly archetypal, presented in an ethereal manner. The result is a collection of stories structured like basic, effective fables, which remains true even when the pieces follow SF plotting tropes (imagine Philip K. Dick as part of the oral tradition). In comparison, the sermon-like essays are at times overwhelming with the sheer number of ideas they introduce, although they still fit well in the collection by virtue of their shared themes.
A sometimes-inaccessible collection; the metaphysical tales shine when they stick to allegory.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2023
ISBN: 9798765237205
Page Count: 174
Publisher: Balboa Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
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