Weekly Reader: Bound by P.L. Sullivan; Brilliant Concept and Strong Female Lead (or Leads) Make Up For The At Times Confusing Plot

Weekly Reader: Bound by P.L. Sullivan; Brilliant Concept and Strong Female Lead (or Leads) Make Up For The At Times Confusing Plot

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: One thing that I will say about Bound by P.L. Sullivan is that its concept is incredibly intriguing and original. It involves a woman from a seemingly violent race who has another personality surgically attached to her and she is required to commit violence in the name of another world. It's a strange concept but science fiction allows us to imagine the impossible and Bound excels at that.

In a world of Polis, Adin Rayne is a Keld. That basically means in her home world with it's rigidity, laws, and preference for nonviolent conflict, Adin is well an outlier to say the least. The Keld are held under suspicion because they appear to have violent and sociopathic tendencies. In fact, Adin, as a nursery school child, was responsible for the death of one of her caregivers. The authorities have the bright idea to channel those violent tendencies and have her serve in their military peacekeeper organization. Her violent tendencies are even further curbed by her being mentally  bound to another girl at the point of death named Shennan. Shennan is supposed to calm Adin's more violent nature into something more diplomatic. 

Decades later, Adin and Shennan are sent to investigate a strange disorder called The Mad or Rills. Rills spread from planet to planet afflicting people with insanity. Insanity becomes a contagion and anyone could be affected. It's a tough assignment, one that causes a lot of problems for Adin/Shennan and their colleagues, friends, and family. It is a very painful disorder in which glyphs appear on the victim's face and they act in a violent thoughtless manner.

This is one of those science fiction novels with an incredibly confusing plot. Sometimes it's hard to tell who is fighting who, who all the players are, and what side they are on. It's one of those books were you expect a traitor because everyone is pretty much suspect. Unfortunately, unlike Centricity which is well written enough to make the Reader go back and decipher what they missed, the density of Bound's plot doesn't leave enough interest to do that. The revelation of the Rills' origin is someone hard to follow as well whether they are organic or man made and act according to their own survival instincts or someone else's orders.

However what the plot lacks in coherence, it makes up for a very baffling and intriguing concept, particularly within the characters of Adin and Shennan. The bound is sort of like having Dissociative Identity Disorder except the other personality is surgically inserted inside the body. However, the bound goes one step further. When one woman sleeps or is shut down, the other takes over. They are able to communicate telepathically even when one is asleep and the other awake. They share each other's thoughts, memories, and know one another's associates, friends, and lovers. What is particularly impressive is that when one personality is ascendant, the body changes appearance to reflect which one is in charge. So they can go from short androgynous dark haired Adin to tall sexy blond Shennan within a conversation.

What is most fascinating with this concept of binding is that we see how this affects  both Adin and Shennan. The bound brings out their most positive and negative attributes. Adin is the more action gung ho fighter. When it comes time to investigate trouble on a planet, guns ablazing, she's your woman. She has a strategic military thought process and doesn't mind using it by leaving a few bodies in her wake. 

Shennan is the diplomat. She is the one called on to negotiate with planetary leaders and speak to superior officers in the calm rational manner that Adin lacks. Shennan is the talker and Adin is the doer.

There are times when their morals and values flip flop. Shennan's cold nature and determination to meet an assignment to the finish sometimes clashes with Adin's concerns about the living element and what the cost is to all involved.

Shennan and Adin's dichotomy is expertly explores in terms of their relationships. Adin is more reserved and had an on again/off again lover. Shennan however is more sexually adventurous and has had male and female lovers. Some of the more moving chapters occur between Adin and Shennan and Shennan's former lovers, including Cale, a man with whom she broke his heart when they were in the Academy, and Lyssa, a woman who Shennan considers her greatest love.

With the Bound, Sullivan raises some interesting themes and questions about the nature of violence. In some ways, the book is similar to A Clockwork Orange in that if someone is brutally forced to give up their violent nature then does that make it right? Adin and Shennan are not a whole person. They are two halves of one person unable to function without each other. In their insistence in using Shennan to end Adin's violence, the Polis prove to care very little about the cost on these two women or their emotional and psychological states. They also seem to have little regard for what their orders mean to the other planets and their citizens. Their authoritarian nature ends up being colder, more violent, and more sociopathic than anything that Adin would have thought of on her own.

Bound is sometimes hard to follow but its concept and characterization are incredible. Anyone who reads to it will be Bound to have an intriguing thoughtful suspenseful time.