The Fire Has Gone Out!

I have hit a wall of sorts where blogging is concerned. For one thing, my time is extremely limited at the moment, and for another, the fire has gone out, if you get my meaning. I have sort of lost the desire to come up with new material for the few readers that frequent this site. So, I’m either going to have to try to build up interest again, some how, some way, and post when the time is available to me, or I will have to put the blog on hiatus until such time as the well of inspiration is filled once more—either that or kill the blog altogether, which is the very last thing I wanted to do, as many are waiting on reviews that have not yet materialized.

I can’t tell you how many times I have attempted to write a post, in addition to completing the book I’m currently reading, but the inspiration just isn’t there anymore. This quandary is regrettable, but it is, unfortunately, the position I’m in at the moment, and I relay this solely because I owe it to you all to keep you informed. So there you have it!

Antarktos Rising - A Review

Author: Jeremy Robinson
Publisher: Breakneck Books
ISBN: 978-0-9796-9290-1
Pages: 300

Much better! Jeremy Robinson has learned a few new tricks since last I read his work, and all of those tricks are on display in this particular title. There are deeper character sketches than usual; better scene building; and dialogue flows much more naturally this time around. The plot itself is far more complex and layered than the one in his previous work, with the usual science-speak and religious overtones seasoning the book’s broth.

Many will compare this to the glut of Christian fiction that delivers stories concerned with end times, à al Tim LaHaye, but that idea couldn’t be farther from the truth. Robinson’s tale is epic, well-written, and thought-provoking. While at times heavy on biblical concepts, the book tackles them in a way that holds interest, rather than inciting disdain; this is mainly due to the uncharted territory Robinson decides to sail into, what with the expansion of the theory surrounding the Nephilim (or “fallen ones”), a race of beings—thought to be fallen angels by some—that is granted a brief mention in the Scriptures. Robinson holds—or, that is his plot holds—that Noah and his family weren’t the only survivors of the great flood. Some of the Nephilim made it through unscathed as well. That little fact alone should assure you that this book wasn’t intended for average Christians, as many of them would balk at these very notions.

Robinson, in a note to his readers, urges as follows:

Antarktos Rising is a work of fiction. All of the characters in the novel are fictional, as are their beliefs. For your own enjoyment, don’t take fiction seriously. Authors, for the most part, aren’t trying to convert you to their personal beliefs; we’re trying to entertain you. If I accomplish that, I’ve done my job.

Funny how some of his words tie in perfectly with a previous post on this blog, the one dealing with the purpose of a novel.

Robinson also rehashes a bit of history as well, causing his characters to reenact, in a way, the Old West land claims that resulted from a race for new land—in this case, a freshly thawed Antarctica, or—to use the ancient designation, as the title of the book suggests—Antarktos. Crustal displacement, we are told, shifts the earth forty degrees, killing 2.5 billion people, and Antarctica in turn becomes “a tropical rain forest the size of the United States.” The book commences with a series of disasters that effectively set things in motion, not least the tsunami featured in chapter six, which is written so effectively it recalls the devastating events of December 2004, which were touched off, of course, by the historic Sumatra-Andaman earthquake.

Antarktos Rising, in short, is one of those rare thrillers that will keep readers turning pages, because the story doesn’t really let up, and that’s bad if one decides to crack the pages of this thing just before going to bed.

The Purpose of A Novel

Now I know I’ve touched on this particular subject in previous posts, but I have to ask the question again, “What is the purpose of a novel?” This is not necessarily related to another question, “Why have you decided to write a novel?” The second question can have various answers, many, if not all of them involving some personal agenda on the part of the writer or writers in question. But the answer to the first question, and in all truth, there really is only one answer (which I’ve supplied in this particular post already) is to entertain. Keeping this in mind, that a novel’s main—and in most cases nowadays—sole purpose, is to entertain, a writer should be able to approach a book with this decidedly singular agenda, abutting it and supplementing it with experimentation, lofty artistic objectives, or other personal goals, so long as the primary agenda remains in full frontal view.

A lot of writers lose sight of this “decidedly singular agenda,” placing everything before it, thus leaving their readers scratching their heads at the ridiculousness they’ve been mercilessly beset by. In a recent review, I criticized one writer for having written a few stories that were “absolutely vapid” and lacking plots. His best and only defense was that James Joyce was more or less accused of similar literary crimes—particularly those that concern stories without plots. This could have led to a lot of heavy-handed rebuttals on my part, not least the “how dare you compare yourself to . . . blah, blah, blah . . . albeit inadvertently?” line, yet I decided to digress, because I have no intention of belittling struggling writers. It’s neither my desire nor place to.

I said that to say this: Joyce, Faulkner, Nabokov, Pynchon . . . contemporary writers can use them as an excuse to apply their own brand of experimentation to literature all they want—as though these souls, by so doing, gave contemporary authors license to do so as well—but bear in mind that all of them experimented in various novels with the goal of entertaining their readers. And I believe all of them succeeded.

All of the aforementioned authors understood story dynamics, character, and language; they attempted to make every detail of their narratives interesting, despite the sometimes mundane nature of the action being described. Take Joyce’s Ulysses for instance. During a carriage ride—what could have easily been a dull, uninteresting narrative block—is pumped full with lyrical prose and vivid imagery, even with terse clauses and seeming half-phrases applied:

The carriage steered left for Finglas road.

The stonecutter’s yard on the right. Last lap. Crowded on the spit of land silent shapes appeared, white, sorrowful, holding out calm hands, knelt in grief, pointing. Fragments of shapes, hewn. In white silence: appealing. The best obtainable. Thos. H. Dennany, monumental builder and sculptor.

Passed.

On the curbstone before Jimmy Geary the sexton’s an old tramp sat, grumbling, emptying the dirt and stones out of his huge dustbrown yawning boot. After life’s journey.

Gloomy gardens then went by, one by one: gloomy houses.

Mr. Power pointed.

—That is where Childs was murdered, he said. The last house.

Joyce sets the scene for us, perfectly. Two words are used to paint an interesting picture: “Gloomy gardens,” what is essentially an antipode to our usual view of gardens. And gloomy houses follow; “gloomy” because we are to believe that someone could be murdered in one of them. And we do believe, because the imagery allows us to.

Much of the above language is almost poetic, and could stand to be read over and over again. One isn’t really concerned with plot when one is presented with language the likes of this. The beauty is in the details, and following a reading of Joyce’s work, I come away not only satisfied, but also entertained!