The Imperfect Hand of Fate by Wade Monk; The Balance of Evil by Kim Rozdeba, and Obsessed with Change: A Look at the Future From the Beginning by Cecil W. Lee

 The Imperfect Hand of Fate by Wade Monk; The Balance of Evil by Kim Rozdeba, and Obsessed with Change: A Look at the Future From the Beginning by Cecil W. Lee

By Julie Sara Porter 

Bookworm Reviews 

The Imperfect Hand of Fate by Wade Monk 

This review is a summary. The longer version is on LitPick

Wade Monk crafts an effective Suspense Thriller with The Imperfect Hand of Fate. He uses the dual narratives to their fullest exploring an elaborate spy game from the point of view of someone in the exact center and someone on the outside but becomes greatly affected.

There are two stories being told in this novel, set primarily in 1960’s Georgia. The first is that of Haskell Hand, a teenager, who sees a mysterious man acting strangely at the library where he volunteers. Every week at the same time, the man reads copies of The Constitution, the local newspaper, and the same copies of the same books and leaves after a few seconds of searching. Haskell’s curiosity about the man, dubbed Mr. Constitution, is a relief from Haskell's personal stress and boredom with small town life in De Soto, Georgia. 

The second story is that of Daryl Timmons, the aforementioned Mr. Constitution, a former American GI who was imprisoned by the Soviets during his time in the Korean War. He is forced to spy against his country for the safety of his wife and daughter. The spy games are greatly detailed as he is surrounded by betrayal and dividing loyalties.

In many ways, Haskell and Daryl are foils for each other. They are at different stages in life as a teenager and adult respectively but feel trapped by circumstances. Daryl’s trap however is a literal one while Haskell's is figurative. Haskell is trapped by poverty. He is the subject of derision because of a prank that he caused. Financial constraints keep him from pursuing higher education.

He also has familial pressure. His mother died and he doesn't get along with the surviving family members particularly his disabled brother, Elliot. His prank appears not to be a cry for attention but a cry from a boy who is under pressure and is on the verge of cracking. The Mystery of Mr. Constitution distracts him because it requires an answer.

Daryl is someone that is also surrounded by physical and psychological stress. He was graphically tortured during the Korean War. He is retrained to be a double agent in a Soviet program imitating a typical American town and whose agents assume American identities to infiltrate the United States. 

Daryl marries in Russia and fathers a daughter. His handlers force him to return to his home country as a spy and saboteur. He has become embittered and only cares about his family’s safety. He will betray his country to keep his family safe. 

Haskell and Daryl's stories parallel in many ways but unfortunately, never fully connect. However, they are connected thematically as two men trapped in circumstances beyond their control and are trying to find some sense in a world that has deprived them of their free will and ability to fully change those circumstances.

Balance of Evil by Kim Rozdeba

This review is a summary. The longer version is on Reader Views.

Kim Rozdeba’s novel Balance of Evil is a compelling political thriller that combines the intricate details of a wide-spread conspiracy and the intimate poignancy of a family drama.

Retired businessman Scott Barton stumbles upon a USB flash drive with contents that reveal a sophisticated and secret weapons program between the USA and Russia for decades called FIST. After opening it, Scott and his wife, Colleen, are followed by sinister figures in black helicopters and unmarked cars. 

Scott is naturally terrified of this situation of going from mild mannered executive to fugitive on the run from government agents trying to kill him. He is frightened but confused, particularly about his wife who seems to know more about this situation than she is letting on.

The way the FIST conspiracy is depicted makes for very engaging reading. Scott's discovery of the flash drive seems arbitrary but once we are given the full situation, it makes more sense. Scott, his family, and their allies are aware that they are laser focused mostly on one specific organization and one leader. This organization is simply one part of the decades of hidden agenda, secrets, underhanded deals, and tyranny. Getting rid of one leader can only do so much.

By far the most heartfelt aspect of the book is the family drama that is equal to and sometimes more prominent to the conspiracy aspects. Scott is a naive noob thrown into an unknown world but surprisingly adapts well to it. This experience opens Scott’s eyes towards Colleen who is a seasoned pro at espionage situations. Scott is at first confused about his wife's separate life and upset by her deception in covering it. But as he is pulled further into her world, he begins to admire the strength and resilience that she had in living within it. It makes him love her even more.

Scott and Colleen are forced to recognize their real selves that are behind the disguises of a normal exterior life and live solely within the reality of a duplicitous interior life. Questions of whether the family unit can remain intact under these discoveries and the subsequent actions abound. 

Obsession With Change: A Look at the Future From The Beginning by Cecil W. Lee

Cecil W. Lee’s short Science Fiction novel/coffee table book, Obsession With Change: A Look at the Future From the Beginning effectively combines both AI and the human element. Lee collaborated with an AI entity named Lahneer to write the book and the illustrations are human originated by Lee who gave instructions to AI. The combination of styles gives a striking combination of human and AI creativity. 

The book is actually a series of short concepts, stories, and fictionalized interviews with figures from the future talking about their daily lives and conflicts. Each chapter also features illustrations that explore the concepts within the text. 

The book describes character’s experiences with futuristic body art, CRISPR genetic engineering, holographic sex, robot artists and musicians, body modifications, AI performed surgery, augmentation, interstellar travel, cybernetic replacements, cryopreservation, neuroplasticity, synthetic mind, and autonomy protocol. 

The book gives short accounts of characters living in the future and how they experience this world around them. Among them are Elara Masaki who goes through a CRISPR procedure to have a pair of wings inserted on her back, KX-91 a robot artist who is gaining attention from the critics, and Solar Callaway a hoverboard champion who is drafted into receiving cyberbiotic augmentation and going on an interstellar mission to explore a distant planet. 

Unlike many anthologies, it’s really difficult to discern which I would consider favorites in this book. These aren’t completed short stories so much as they are snippets or sketches of what could potentially be larger stories in one continuous shared universe. 

The book is intriguing both in text and images. The text being told through a series of articles, interviews, and short essays gives the work a meta style and makes one feel that they are not reading a fictional work but perhaps a dry fact based account from the year 2091 catching Readers up to the latest news. In its own way, that approach can be immersive. 

These are all potentially interesting ideas and it would be nice if Lee explored them further in longer stories and novels. The snippets only offer a glimpse of this futuristic world that is so distant chronologically but at the time seems so familiar because we are in the early stages.

Perhaps we can get more insight into why Elara wants a pair of wings, what Solar experiences in his travels, and who influences and inspires KX-91’s art.

The illustrations are AI style and while many shun AI art for very good reason, this is a book where it kind of works. Since the writing style acts like it is set in the future, there is no reason to assume the illustrations wouldn’t be either. KX-91’s story in particular benefits from this as we see the art produced by a futuristic fictional robot but actually created by a present AI program and originated by a human author. They are both eerie with that uncanny valley feel that modern AI art produces but also evocative in capturing emotions from a being that shouldn't have any.

Memories of MK Ultra: A Journey of Discovery From Darkness to Deliverance by Bill Yarborough; A Truth Inspired and Terrifying Tale of Child Abduction and Mind Control

 

Memories of MK Ultra: A Journey of Discovery From Darkness to Deliverance by Bill Yarborough; A Truth Inspired and Terrifying Tale of Child Abduction and Mind Control 

By Julie Sara Porter 

Bookworm Reviews 

Spoilers: Of the human experimentations,  one of  the most enigmatic, controversial, and infamous (and that’s saying a lot) is undoubtedly MKUltra. It was designed by the CIA, lasted from 1953-1973, and was a series of experiments that used numerous methods, such as psychoactive drugs, brainwashing, electroshocks, sensory deprivation, isolation, psychological manipulation, verbal, physical, and sexual abuse, and torture, often on unsuspecting people who did not know that they were being experimented upon or if they did, what the studies were actually for. The goal was allegedly to develop and produce drug interrogations that could be used to weaken individuals and force confessions through brainwashing and torture.More than 80 institutions were involved including military, colleges and universities, hospitals, prisons, and pharmaceutical companies.There were many deaths connected to the project, most notably Frank Olson, a US Army biochemist and biological researcher. Olson was secretly given LSD without his knowledge or consent and died after falling from a 13th story window a week later. MKUltra was a blatant violation of human rights and revealed the CIA’s abuse of power, particularly with regards to withholding consent and an inability to uphold democratic principles.The project officially ended in 1973 and was revealed to the public in 1975. In 1977, a Freedom of Information Act request uncovered 20,000 documents related to MKUltra. Surviving information was declassified in 2001. 

Despite the declassification, there is plenty of speculation about many other experiments, methods, real goals, how far it reached, who was experimented on, and even more frightening whether it’s still going on. Some of it can’t be officially confirmed or verified but many first hand accounts and personal testimonies suggest that some of those theories might be more fact than fiction. Among those speculations are whether MKUltra targeted or experimented on children. There are no confirmed or definitive answers whether or not children were experimented on, though there are first hand testimonies from those who claim to have been child victims of MKUltra’s experimentation programs. One of those people is Bill Yarborough. He believes that he, his brother, and sister spent the summer of 1958 being experimented on for MKUltra, They blocked the memories out only to begin recalling them in the 1980s. Their experience was the inspiration for Yarborough’s semi autobiographical novel, Memories of MK-Ultra: A Journey of Discovery from Darkness to Deliverance.

Now it’s worth noting that even though Yarborough insists that the kernel of his book that he and his siblings were part of an MKUltra experiment is true, the book is not actually about them. It is only based on them and is considered a work of fiction. The perspectives from doctors, researchers, and military personnel are speculated upon by Yarborough himself. Also he acknowledges that many of the esoteric themes and paranormal situations might have been triggered not by actual events but by trauma, drugs, and altered memories. Because of this, from this point forward, I will treat the book as fiction and refer to the context within the book itself for the remainder of this review. 

In 1958, Tommy Matthews, his sister, Beth, and brother, Curtis were kidnapped during a family vacation in Washington D.C. They spend several weeks being educated and monitored in a secret MKUltra facility by various personnel including Dr. Rudolf Holtzman, an expert on mind control. The children are subjected to sexual abuse, sensory deprivation, mind control, psychoactive drugs, extrasensory perception tests and various other tests. Even though the experiment only lasts for a few weeks and the children are eventually released to their parents, they are left seriously damaged well into adulthood, particularly Tommy. He develops a very aggressive and violent sex drive and mysterious outside forces influence him to one day become President of the United States. 

The book alternates between Tommy's perspective and Holtzman’s. Holtzman's chapters present detail by detail what exactly happened to the children during those weeks and the experiments are harrowing. They are prostituted by a pedophiliac soldier. The researchers create mental associations with actions such as putting a fear of death into Tommy if he fails in school. They use hypnosis and subliminal messages to make Beth see ghosts and spirits and brainwash and drug Curtis to the point that he can barely function as an adult. It's hard enough to imagine this treatment on adults but to picture it on children makes it ten times worse.

The experiments make one wonder whether the military and researchers even thought about the long term effects of what they were doing. Okay, they might have created people who could withstand torture or in the case of the book get elected into positions of power but they could just as easily have created people with extreme psychological disorders that might be unable to function within any society. Holtzman does consider these possibilities up to a point becoming a moral center in MKUltra, well sort of.

Holtzman questions some of the ill treatment and the means and motives of his colleagues, particularly those who had ties to the Nazi Party in Germany. However, he still allows the experimentation to happen and monitors the children's progress as though they were lab rats. He is also concerned with outside influences on the children particularly Shoney, an older boy who shows a protective big brotherly streak towards the Matthews children. Shoney becomes their only link to the outside world and the closest thing to a positive parental figure that they have during that time and one would argue even afterwards since their parents are ultimately found wanting. 

Holtzman cares about the children, but is threatened by Shoney’s bond with them.

The impact of the experiments is felt even after the children return to their parents and into their school days. It makes their mark forever and shapes them into adulthood. Tommy in particular is affected by the expectations set on him by his parents and the researchers. The fear of failure equated with death causes him to become an overachiever throughout school and conjure up paranoid delusions about authority figures. He also has very aggressive sexual impulses connected to violent images and news. Energetic fast paced music connects him to his ambitious side and future goals. All of these associations and connections lead to him becoming an ambitious political figure one who will lead, connive, conspire and if that doesn't work destroy everything around him to fulfill his vision.

While Tommy's path is set towards outside ambitions, Beth’s is more set towards the mystical and otherworldly thanks to MKUltra’s tests on remote viewing and astral projection. A literate and creative girl, she became tormented by visions of aliens and ghosts that she sees out of the corner of her eye and very vivid dreams of other worlds. Beth rebels against her parents and in the late 60’s walks the hippy path. She constantly looks to different religions such as Christianity, Occult, and New Age practices for spiritual validation. Her mystical experiences inspire her to become a best selling Science Fiction author and study hypnosis to retrieve her and her brothers’ memories.

Even though Beth and Tommy were traumatized by MKUltra, they are still able to function as adults and carve out something resembling lives of their own despite the ill treatment. They are shaped but not entirely beaten. The same could not be said for Curtis making his story the most traumatic of all. He obtains a fascination for masculine and virile images of superheroes and larger than life performers like John Wayne inspiring him to become an actor and stuntman. However, inside his masculine and virile exterior is a frightened little boy. Of the three siblings, Curtis has the hardest time adjusting to the outside world and is tormented by visual and auditory hallucinations and paranoid violent delusions. He ends up institutionalized under Tommy's care. 

Three children were used, abused, and betrayed and became completely damaged, programmed, disturbed, and ruined as adults. All because of a secret government project that led to decades of distrust, suspicion, violence, and insanity, destroyed many lives, and ultimately proved nothing.