Book Review

I feel sorry for the censors over at the CIA.

Seriously.

They have to read every article, essay and book written by every CIA employee, current or past, before publication, to insure no secrets are released, intentionally or otherwise. But--and this is apparent from my reading of various items published by CIA employees, current and past--they are not allowed to edit or critique the works they censor. This is also apparent from the quality of the novel I am trying to work through right now. I don't know if I'll make it.

The cover boasts the fact the author is ex-clandestine service. The blurbs on the back, including from Larry Niven and Dean Coonts,* rave about the book's cosmic science-fictiony thrillerness. This story is supposed to tie in every paranormal X-files conspiracy theory as only a CIA insider can! As best I can tell so far it's a minor miracle we're not all speaking Russian by now.

Let's forget about the protagonist who conveniently develops characteristics as necessary. He's rich. And good looking. Does he need to figure out something technical? Well, he's intelligent. Wait, not just intelligent. A savant. Four degrees from three different schools. (Does Cornell even offer an advanced degree in philosophical epistemology and astrophysics?)

This brilliant, well-bred, rich young man volunteers for France in World War I (admittedly before getting his college education). While many people, on both sides, thought the war would be a romantic adventure when it first started, our hero goes over in 1916 when the full horrors of trench warfare are well known. What's his motive? Don't know. Not an overpowering love of France. Really, no idea.

Now, I'm willing to believe (or at least suspend disbelief) that he's brought back from a battlefield death (combination shooting and gassing) by aliens. This is supposed to be a sci-fi thriller after all. However, I can't believe he's given a magical Bible by his (not nearly as mysterious as she's probably supposed to be, nudge, nudge, and who is never heard from again anyway) nurse, put on a hospital ship (named Galactic. Get it?) with another wounded prisoner whose name and wounds are almost identical to that of his best friend who went to France and was killed right next to our hero and who then dies himself (why was he even there?) when the hospital ship is torpedoed by a German U-boat whose captain surfaces to machine gun the survivors but is in turn blown out of the water by another hospital ship (the Angelic. Get it? Get it?) that was following eight hours behind and carries a cannon whose gunner is happy to sink "the Nazis." Nazis? Really? It's still 1917 at the latest. And was he machine gunning the survivors for eight full hours? That's dedication. Actually, it's all nonsense and has nothing to do with the story as far as I can tell.

Nor am I willing to accept that the alien who crash lands his saucer, containing his wife and kids no less, at Roswell while buzzing Earth with several friends for no discernible reason is named . . . wait for it . . . Kul' da-Zak (probably because he was destined to dead end into the New Mexican desert). It is a detail, unfortunately typical, as irritating as it is irrelevant since he only ever appears again as a half rotting corpse being transported across country in a box misdirectingly labelled as carrying torpedoes. Of course, our hero, now with the CIA and escorting the trip, proceeds to ask a GI what the labels mean, then tells him they're not carrying torpedoes but bodies, then tells him it's just a joke and never to speak to anyone about this ever again pinkie swear. Is this the CIA's idea of operational security?

Not to mention the unseen omniscient supreme being named Ga'Lawed with twelve Samaritan "apostles" named Won, Tu, Tha'Ree, Vor, Fieva, Sixkt, . . .. Need I go on? Perhaps something in CIA culture drains imagination from its operatives.
And this is where I give up: Our hero, who single handedly predicted not just the outbreak of WWII but its ultimate course and outcome by means, we are told, of theories from Poincare and Malthus and a ball of string, has just handed a report marked "Eyes Only," to his boss, the admiral, a security level which he has just created, also single handedly and without any input from the intelligence community or any other government entity, thereby confusing his boss, the admiral, who responds saying: "My sailor's gut is full of gas and I'm going to break wind like a high-pressure squall. Tell me something that calms this bureaucratic sea."

Nope. I quit. I'm barely a third of the way in and I just can't take it any more. This is a thriller with no thrill. A suspense story with no suspense. Dull, plodding exposition interspersed with inane dialog, over-explaining but never showing.

The Cryptos Conundrum, by Chase Brandon. As you value your sanity, let this one lie.

*(Either Niven and Coonts owe Tom Doherty money or the CIA has something big on them in its files.)