A gnostic sci-fi novella

Beyond the Great, Bloody, Bruised, and Silent Veil of this World

Jordan Krall

Publisher: Journalstone (Bizarro Pulp Press)

Pub Date: April 22, 2017

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Once again, I end up with a novel that astounds me with its almost poetic style, the intricacy of characters and plot and the fine tapestry it weaves only to end up saying, "WHAT THE HELL DID I JUST READ?"

It isn't that I didn't understand it. Well, actually it is that I didn't understand it. However I doubt the author meant to pull it all together just to make me think I was clever enough to get it. I think Jordan Krall delights in mystifying his audience as long as he makes them think, which is exactly what happens in Beyond the Great, Bloody, Bruised and Silent Veil of this World. It starts with a man named Barry on a "train" to Mars. Here is where I start to lose it. As i read, I often wonder if Barry is one person, multiple persons, or a fiction within a fiction.. Mars itself become a intriguing mess. It seems to be a hive of outcasts, corporate stooges, drug advocates, and perhaps a messiah. There are terrorists with bombs but so do corporate entities have bombs which they may be using in their own seditious ways. I think. You think a book with Patterson-like short chapters would be easy to decipher but we get it in so many perspectives and those perspectives become so entwined with another, it just revs up the imagination even more. It makes me yearn for the relatively simple worlds of Phillip K. Dick and Valis.

The author calls it as "A gnostic SF novella epic" which is as accurate a description I can give. It also tunes into many of the thing this novella does have in common with Phillip K. Dick. That includes a rather mystical outlook and a possibly unreliable description of the world we are visiting. Part of the book involves Yesu and Galileans that will certainly provoke theological inclinations. Yet it all becomes part of the jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces that is this book.

Does it wrap up at the end? Actually it does but in a way that will send you back to read it a second or third time. I read it again. I recommend one reads it twice to get the nuances and twists that happen. But if you are looking for a book that does wrap everything in a bow, you are turning the wrong pages.

So why do I recommend it? For the same reason one may attempt to read Ulysses for the mind boggling trip it sends you on. Now mind you, I'm not comparing Beyond to Ulysses.. That would be silly. For one thing, you will actually finish Beyond. Another, you will want to read it again. I mean, how many people want to even be near the first page of Ulysses after struggling through it? Beyond is a fast and glorious read trapping the reader in its puzzles. Will you understand it? Probably not. Will you read it again to try to understand it? Absolutely. Will you love the act of a master word juggler? I'll bet positive on that one too. For all that, regardless how you decipher the plot, this book with the ridiculously long title gets four stars.