The Childless Ones by Cam Rhys Lay - Guest Blogger Book Review
Synopsis
TWO WORLDS...TWO ALTERNATING NARRATIVES...A REALIST RELATIONSHIP DRAMA...AN EPIC FANTASY...
In the "real world," we open with Jack Ampong just leaving a prostitute when he receives a phone call that his wife Sarah has been assaulted. With this incident as a jumping off point, we watch as Jack and Sarah deal with past guilt and regrets as well as their own ongoing struggles with relationships, infertility and parenthood.
In the "fantasy world"—ostensibly written by Jack—a bureaucratic Empire rules with an iron fist...an ancient sect of sorcerers have extraordinary powers but are cursed with the inability to have children... and a race of beings called the Mandrakar live lives one quarter the length of normal people, but have memories that are passed on to future generations through the last of an ancient breed of tree. Along the way, we meet a crotchety governor who just wants to do right by his granddaughter, a hardboiled, lesbian, dwarf detective who just wants another drink, and a villainous sorcerer whose motives form one of the central mysteries of the story.
Throughout the book, the two narratives echo off one another—often in surprising ways—ultimately commenting on the very nature of storytelling itself.
In the "real world," we open with Jack Ampong just leaving a prostitute when he receives a phone call that his wife Sarah has been assaulted. With this incident as a jumping off point, we watch as Jack and Sarah deal with past guilt and regrets as well as their own ongoing struggles with relationships, infertility and parenthood.
In the "fantasy world"—ostensibly written by Jack—a bureaucratic Empire rules with an iron fist...an ancient sect of sorcerers have extraordinary powers but are cursed with the inability to have children... and a race of beings called the Mandrakar live lives one quarter the length of normal people, but have memories that are passed on to future generations through the last of an ancient breed of tree. Along the way, we meet a crotchety governor who just wants to do right by his granddaughter, a hardboiled, lesbian, dwarf detective who just wants another drink, and a villainous sorcerer whose motives form one of the central mysteries of the story.
Throughout the book, the two narratives echo off one another—often in surprising ways—ultimately commenting on the very nature of storytelling itself.
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Jennifer's Review
The Childless Ones is a good book. A bit hard to read, but it's two books
paralleling each other.
One starts off with a man who's wife is assaulted so
he tries to find her assaulter through a dwarf detective.
We then go to
another story about a whole other thing involving the Cree, who are cursed
with the inability to have children, and a sorcerer who has powers and is on
the run and has to fulfill his premonition before he dies.
How the book
ends will surprise you.
Two stars.
Author Bio
Cam Rhys Lay attended the University of Pennsylvania and received
his MFA from the University of Kansas. He lives in Brooklyn with his
wife Supriya where he runs marketing for an education technology company. This is his first book.
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