Basically the central character, Jack Stein, is a psychic investigator hired by a corporation to find out what happened to some miners who disappeared from a site on another planet. His investigative powers are heavily based on his dreams (the psychic part) and his cunning detective skills. The futuristic place the story is set is interesting and the author includes it almost like another character rather than a backdrop. There are links to alchemy and ancient symbols that pop up and right now are seemingly unrelated but I am sure will influence the outcome.
We shall see how this turns out. It is a book I received in a swap and not something I would normally read, but it is a good light summer read for sure.
Before this book I re-read Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje which I forgot I had already read. I liked Amazon.com's description better than my own so here is a quote:
In his Booker Prize-winning third novel, The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje explored the nature of love and betrayal in wartime. His fourth, Anil's Ghost, is also set during a war, but unlike in World War II, the enemy is difficult to identify in the bloody sectarian upheaval that ripped Sri Lanka apart in the 1980s and '90s. The protagonist, Anil Tissera, a native Sri Lankan, left her homeland at 18 and returns to it 15 years later only as part of an international human rights fact-finding mission. In the intervening years she has become a forensic anthropologist--a career that has landed her in the killing fields of Central America, digging up the victims of Guatemala's dirty war. Now she's come to Sri Lanka on a similar quest. But as she soon learns, there are fundamental differences between her previous assignment and this one:
The bodies turn up weekly now. The height of the terror was 'eighty-eight and 'eighty-nine, but of course it was going on long before that. Every side was killing and hiding the evidence. Every side. This is an unofficial war, no one wants to alienate the foreign powers. So it's secret gangs and squads. Not like Central America. The government was not the only one doing the killing.In such a situation, it's difficult to know who to trust. Anil's colleague is one Sarath Diyasena, a Sri Lankan archaeologist whose political affiliations, if any, are murky. Together they uncover evidence of a government-sponsored murder in the shape of a skeleton they nickname Sailor. But as Anil begins her investigation into the events surrounding Sailor's death, she finds herself caught in a web of politics, paranoia, and tragedy.
I loved reading The English Patient and Ondaatje's way of slowly telling a story so that you not only care deeply about the characters, you are shattered by the book ending. I have only read these two books of his and I look forward to reading more.
When I love an author I tend to want to read all of the books they have written. So is the case with the next book on my night stand. Tim Robbins is one of my favorite authors. His quirky, often irreverent stories are a rouse for a much deeper, more meaningful situation with in the story. Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas is a title that alludes to more of what I have loved in the past.
I first got hooked on Robbins when I was in college. I was working my summer job at the mall is a cutesy country craft decor store that hardly anyone would visit. Someone had left a promo mini-book with a few chapters of Skinny Legs and All which I read out of boredom at first. I read it, liked what I saw and filed away the name for a future read. It wasn't until many years later that I finally bought the book and loved it. It is my most favorite book of his and I would recommend it heartily!
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