Tracey's Calling by Rob Santana, The Mantis Continuum (The Mantis Gland Series Book 4) by Adam Andrews Johnson and Where The Wave Broke by Robert Rooks, The Travel Man
By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
Tracey's Calling by Rob Santana Tracey's Calling by Rob Santana is another great work by the author, mostly. The tension is brilliantly executed. It covers a rape and it's aftermath with depth and understanding without being exploitative. However, it has a very abrupt open ended resolution without really settling anything and left a lot of unanswered questions.
Tracey is left traumatized after being raped by Phil, a married husband and father. She is angry and filled with vengeance but she doesn't want to just have him arrested or kill him. She has a more long-term goal. She manipulates her way into his home, befriends his wife, Patsy and daughter, Joy, and blackmails Phil into financially providing her escape from her abusive family.
This book is essentially a two-person story between Phil and Tracey, the rapist and his sexual victim, the blackmailer and her financial victim. Phil provides the gun by his actions and Tracey remains standing instead of falling down and dying. They both have plenty of depth and layers in their one-on-one combat.
Tracey is very methodical in planning and executing her revenge. She decides to become a haunting presence in Phil’s life instead of taking the easy way out and killing him. It's a way of disarming Phil and leaving him as vulnerable and uncertain as he was. She may have been physically underneath him then but she is figuratively on top now.
Phil is also an interesting albeit antagonistic character. His memories of that night are filled with the graphic violence of that night and his weak attempts at justifying it. He is not empathetic then at all. There is no way that he could be.
However, there are points where the safety of his family is compromised and the Reader's thoughts shift towards Patsy and Joy's welfare and how Phil will be affected by their losses. It allows Readers to understand and even be concerned about the husband and father without defending or condoning the rapist.
Also, Patsy and Joy’s subplots were handled just fine. Patsy sometimes acts as the comic relief by rehearsing meteorological monologues and being preoccupied with an upcoming job interview at a news TV station. However, she also shows awareness with Tracey’s presence and the circumstances of her arrival by going from empathy, to suspicion towards her, then distrust towards Phil.
Joy is an interesting contrast to Tracey. She is a sheltered girl put into violent catastrophic circumstances which Tracey knew practically since birth. She acts like a spoiled brat at times, but it is also a very realistic portrayal of a teenager with emotions, hormones, and irritation at everyone else around her. She also follows Tracey into some dangerous circumstances without thinking of the consequences.
The book loses its stride in the final chapters when things are left unresolved. For spoilers’s sake, I won't reveal them but many conflicts are left without finality and some characters head towards one direction without confronting what they left behind. It's as though the book built and built and then stopped. If Santana wanted to, he could follow with another volume. This cast of characters certainly deserves it.
The Mantis Continuum (The Mantis Gland Series Book 4) by Adam Andrews Johnson
No matter how an ongoing book series, not every volume is going to be a winner. The first three books of Adam Andrews Johnson’s The Mantis Gland Series told a captivating series about a world where some people called Shits have mutations because of a gland called the Mantis Gland. These people develop extraordinary abilities like flight, telekinesis, elemental control, super strength, impervious skin, or remote viewing.
The Shifts are targeted by the Messiahs, a religious cult that has a great deal of power and influence. They perform ritualistic murder on the Shifts so they can swallow and absorb the glands. In each volume, the Shifts gather together in Teshon City where they form a resistance aided by a Demifae,a person who studies magic, called The Mystic and others who fight against the Messiah’s influence. The first three volumes tell a streamlined story and introduce new characters with the goal of bringing them together. They have a definite beginning, middle, and end.
The fourth volume in The Mantis Gland Series, The Mantis Continuum is by far the weakest book in the series. It has some interesting passages of character development that push some forward into new relationships, abilities, positions, and self-awareness. However, there are too many characters and subplots to tell a comprehensible or compelling story. It’s a case of doing way too much at once.
Some of the new characters and subplots aren’t bad. After the murder of their mother, twins Thech and Jzuna flee to Teshon City with an entertainer named Bivon. A trio, Kosephaji, Relliduna, and Pelipi have to escape via boat after Relliduna becomes seriously injured. Meanwhile a group of former Messiahs whose bodies have completely altered into monstrosities by consuming too many Mantis Glands are heading straight for Teshon and they are hungry.
When the book slows down, it captures some pretty decent moments. Thech and Jzuna have a loving sibling relationship. The sweet but dim Thech is the more physical one while the bright eloquent Jzuna provides the brainpower. Jzuna is a maternal influence on her brother’s life while Thecha brings out her more empathetic side.
Another winning relationship is that of Kosephjai and Relliduna. As their lives are in danger, they evolve from best friends to lovers. With the constant threats to their lives and feeling out of focus because of the suspicion towards Shifts, there are very few people that they and Pelipi can rely on. These stressful situations bring out their most vulnerable emotions, cause them to evaluate their feelings towards each other, and move their relationship forward.
The problems occur when the action moves to Teshon City where the new characters meet the old ones. There are way too many characters to focus on and it’s hard to remember who is whom, what their significance is, which book they debuted in, or even their powers.
If you notice in my previous paragraphs, I mentioned some of the character developments that I liked but not their powers, it's because I don't remember them. There wasn't anything that made their abilities stand out or differentiate from the older characters.
There are times when the chapters read like one giant roll call by showing brief scenes of characters in their current setting but don’t do anything important with them. It was almost like Johnson said, “See this character? Yeah they are still alive. Move along.” With that many introductions or reintroductions, it takes a long time for them to actually do anything.
Even an interesting plot point that was introduced in the previous book, of Messiahs, whose bodies have become distorted by their addictive consumption of the Mantis Gland, isn't as compelling as it was in the previous book. They leave a creepy disturbing presence, enter Teshon City with unending appetites, kill a few Shifts, and anticlimactically meet their end. They were much more intimidating as a cult.
Perhaps Johnson should have ended the series at Book Three or, as much as I like the new characters, just developed the original ones instead of inserting new ones. This book shows that there is a time to write and build on a new series but there is also a time that it should end. There is a fifth book, The Mantis Synchronicity. Here's hoping that it's better.
Where The Wave Broke by Robert Rooks, The Travel Man
Where The Wave Broke by Robert Rooks is a short novel about a touring music group that is long on atmosphere but not on plot or thankfully music group cliches.
Two years after they break up, the band Borrowed Light has re-formed to go on a tour of several European cities. Drummer Giada, bassist Julian, and the guitarist Narrator endure long days going from one place to another, long nights of performing, playing at various clubs, and facing fans, owners, executives, on and on.
Let's explain what this book doesn't have. No love triangles though they had some romantic entanglements in the past. No drug addiction fights or onstage meltdowns. No slow climb to success followed by a rapid fall thanks to personnel disputes and the soulless music industry. No internal conflict between the member who is full of themselves and the others. Not much of the usual music tropes, which actually makes this a great short novel.
The biggest strength in the book is the atmosphere. The opening describes the trio’s travels as “The map matters only because sound behaves differently from where you stand. Amsterdam’s wood, Paris’ velvet, Brussels’ take, Montreux’s morning light, Valencia’s warm air, Stockholm’s clean edge, those spaces shaped our tempos more than adrenaline ever could.”
The book is a constant stream of wearying movement, travel, faces running together, frustration with last minute changes and bookings, the exhilaration of a performing high, and the languid exhaustion afterwards.
The clubs are filled with smoky air, tight compacted space, argumentative organizers and club owners, and customers either enraptured by the music or bored with life. Only faces and names change. The music draws the band, their listeners, and club employees for one moment before it ends and they trudge along to their separate lives.
The tone explains perfectly why this book doesn’t go into the usual tropes and cliches about music groups, It tells the truth about that kind of life. Julian, Giada, and The Narrator don’t fall into those typical hijinks because realistically they don’t have time to. They travel to different places, check into hotels, inspect the clubs, negotiate with owners and executives, put up their instruments, sound check, play a few sets, close, thank everybody, pack up, maybe have a few drinks or talk to customers, stagger off to bed, sleep, wake up the next day, check out, and then go on to the next city.
Any conflicts that occur between them is not because of rock star ego. It’s because they are tired and snippy from constant travel and are getting on one another’s nerves,
There is a simplicity within these characters and how they accept the music and travel lifestyle as just a part of their lives. They leave complicated love lives, conflicts with family members, and their own insecurities and self-esteem issues behind to play. Also their personalities mesh well with Giada’s no nonsense leadership and organization skills, Julian’s flash and outgoing personality, and The Narrator’s rationality and poetic observation.
The band gives them a chance to use their musical talents and personality traits to good use by contributing to their chosen art, openly and honestly expressing their emotions, seeing different places and meeting different people, and despite the hardships having a good time, and making exciting memories to look back on.
In fact their tour isn’t really seen as a means to become discovered and sign on with a bigtime record company. It’s just something that they get to do once in a while as friends and musicians and then return to normal life afterwards. .
