Visage of Moros by Tamel Wino; Intense and Harrowing Contemporary Fiction Novel About Loss, Grief, and Vengeance
By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
Spoilers: On the surface Tamel Wino’s Visage of Moros couldn't be more different from his previous book, Dusk Upon Elysium if it tried. The former is a modern Contemporary Fiction novel about a father grieving the death of his daughter. The latter is a Science Fiction novel about a sentient AI that traps users in a paradise of their own design but where their former guilty secrets come back to haunt them. In style and genre they are different, but they have a lot in common thematically.
Both deal with memories of a pleasant paradise, almost a fantasy that is disrupted by a violent, bloody reality. What results is a destroyed protagonist forced to recognize his broken emotions, shattered dreams, and the darkness surrounding them. However, in Dusk Upon Elysium the idyllic fantasy is non-existent, a creation from AI to keep users complacent and lethargic. In Visage of Moros, the idyllic fantasy happened but it was in the past and haunts the protagonist as he deals with the intense grief that envelops his current present reality.
Drystan Caine, a prestigious artist once had a beautiful halcyon family life with his wife, Sophie and their daughter, Alba. It was a life of serious and supportive conversations, family jokes, comfortable money and home, and memorable vacations. That life comes crashing down when Alba disappears one day. Her parent's anxiety turns into grief when the girl's body is found and it becomes clear that she has been murdered. Drystan and Sophie are devastated and their marriage implodes. Sophia takes small steps to move forward with her life, still hurting but willing to live. Drystan however retreats into himself as he becomes a recluse. The only emotions that Drystan feels are crippling depression and simmering rage ready to seek revenge on Alba’s killer if he can find them.
It's also worth noting that there is also a great deal in common between Visage of Moros and Michael J Bowler’s Losing Austin which I just reviewed in that both deal with a family suffering when a child goes missing. However, Austin provides a fanciful Science Fiction based path and resolution whereas Visage of Moros is all too real with Alba’s disappearance and her parent's, particularly Drystan's despair, depression, and rage.
The contrast between Drystan’s life before and after Alba’s death is extensive and deep. The more pleasant that Drystan describes his past, the more the anguish comes through as that past is cruelly ripped away. Wino is able to write those memories not as cloying and mawkish but as clear, matter of fact, and painful. His words are those of someone who has seen those days slip away. They are precious to him because his present life is so empty. It's hateful that Alba's murderers took not only Alba's life physically but Drystan's life which essentially ended when his daughter died.
Since the book is mostly told from Drystan's first person point of view, we are made to share his conflicting emotions and his transition between sadness and anger. He is completely isolated from everyone. He retreats to a cabin and becomes a recluse only leaving to shop for bare essentials. He can't stop thinking and talking about Alba or remembering that awful day.
He makes some effort to bond with Alba's former boyfriend and a female friend but these moments are brief. Even as he tries to find some semblance of life around him, something to assuage his grief, he always comes back to his sadness. It can be exhausting and draining to read about his grief especially if one has an empathetic response towards another's pain. This book does not keep the Reader at an emotional distance but instead pulls them in daring us to see the world through the eyes of someone whose world has essentially come to an end.
There are elements of Mystery or Thriller as Drystan investigates Alba's killer. It doesn't dwell much on the search so the mechanics of the plot aren't as important as how Drystan feels about it and how he pushes others away in his single-minded pursuit to find a resolution, a denouement to his pain.
Most of the action consists of Drystan getting lucky in finding a potential lead and stalking them in the pursuit of murdering them in retaliation. Frozen despair gives way to active aggression and it isn't any better for him. He wants to take this person's life since they took Alba's. Like before with his despair, there is no room left in his life for anything but vengeance.
Drystan's rage is understandable but it is also severe and uncompromising. In a strange way, while he drew us, the Readers in with his grief, he pushed us away with his rage. He's become someone else that even the Reader isn't sure that they recognize. He breaks his last tie and isolates himself, even from us.
Probably this self-imposed isolation is what is at play in one of the more questionable and puzzling aspects of the book. The final pages reveal a strange plot twist that came from nowhere and is not followed with any sort of resolution. It's possible that Wino wanted to throw in a final twist but there may be another reason.
It’s possible that Drystan missing the twist is the point. He is so consumed by grief and hatred, that he can't see what's literally in front of him. He is single minded that the person that he chose killed Alba is the one that he won't believe any different. That isolation drove him insane and he would rather continue down this trajectory than sooth it by admitting that he was wrong and moving on with his life.
The twist is the final note of isolation between protagonist and Reader. It's telling that it is one of the few times where Drystan's first person point of view is no longer present. The twist becomes omniscient, almost intrusive, and is in third person. Drystan is unaware of it. The Reader is and they can't say anything. Drystan wouldn't listen anyway. It's almost a tragic irony that the answer is right in front of him but not acknowledged by him but by us. He's lost his final link to the outside world and is left alone.
Visage of Moros is a heartfelt meditation on loss, grief, Depression, anger, and vengeance. It's harrowing, intense, and ultimately cathartic.
