Customer Reviews

Body Surfing: A Novel

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This novel takes several interesting Occult ingredients and gives them a unique and interesting twist. New takes on metempsychosis (moving from one body to another), demons, and possession make this tale more than just a re-hash of the "same old".

If you're looking for an interesting and entertaining book for this Spring, "Body Surfing" is one of the better new choices. Check it out.

Great book for fantasy lovers who want a more mature fantasy to get away from the common TEEN Fantasy.

Let me begin by confessing that "The Law of Enclosures" is my favorite book of all time. It, too, involved some wonderful "cutting edge" experimentation. I've seen some reviews for this book that seem so "closed-minded."

Expand, imagine and enjoy the otherworldly landscape Peck creates in "Body Surfing."

I loved this book and I particularly enjoyed the fact that it's OUT THERE. Quite honestly this novel has the potential to be a wonderful series because Peck has so expertly created another world with new rules. EXCELLENT READ.

One of the better sci-fantasy novels I've read in a while. The style is akin to earlier Ann Rice. The pace is fast, the details just gory enough. Prose is well written.

Q and Jasper have been friends since their early childhood, but lately the former has been acting strangely out of control even for a high school student until he maneuvers matters so that Jasper dies in a car accident in which Q drove. Instead of reaching the pearly gates, the fires of hell, or a bureaucratic weigh station, Jasper finds himself inside the bodies of fellow teen Jarhead and then that of EMT Larry Bishop. He learns he was possessed by a Mogran (demons) demon who succeeded in converting Jasper into one of them. However, the teen retains much of his human traits and detests jumping from host to host because each time the mind of the body he leaves behind changes for the worse following their experience with possession.

Khartoum based Ilena Magdalen was once possessed by a demon; under his control she committed atrocities that leave her thirsting for vengeance against the Mogran race As the Huntress, she is dedicated to the genocide of all demons on earth. When she learns her current target Leo is in upstate New York, she goes there to kill him and feels no remorse if his host dies too. For that matter transformed Jasper can also become a collateral damage victim. Q and Jasper prepare to fight this fanatic who fails to see how humanly different the former is.

Demons are ephemeral spirits who need a body as they were once mortal and are addicted to human living. Q and Jasper are fascinating characters because each remains loyal friends even though Q killed Jasper. Ilena is totally eaten up with hatred and anger so much so the obsessed demon hunter is insane, which makes her the antagonist instead of the champion. On the other hand Leo is a Byronic antihero who cannot control his demonic addiction to human bodies. There is plenty of action in this urban fantasy, but it is the twist of the lead cast that makes BODY SURFING more than a peck better than the usual sub-genre offering.

Harriet Klausner

A notable departure for Dale Peck this unusual novel skirts around the edges of pop-culture vampirism and in the process offers up some perplexing issues, most notably why such an acclaimed author of literary fiction would write something that seems so sophomoric. From the monstrous to the blood curdling and then onto the brutally erotic, this novel centers on a race of evil beings called the Mogran who surreptitiously slip into people's bodies, taking over their minds and exacting violence on those around them while also assuming the role of the host and replacing the native mind with its own.

Traveling for Upstate New York to Darfur and then accelerating through the Balkans crisis of 1992, the novel starts with Ileana who is part of a secret society called The Legion. Currently in Darfur, Ileana is on the hunt, looking for this "epidemic of lust" where the beast of the Mogran is haunting the streets. One Mogran, Alec has been leaving traces of himself everywhere, sometimes going through fifty bodies in three months. Although the Mogran are as "old as the river, and beyond your comprehension," Ileana remains haunted by the horrors of a single night in 1992, in the Balkans that becomes a waking nightmare when the tattered web of memories her own demons had once left in her mind.

Meanwhile, Leo the oldest and most powerful of all the Mogran, is intent on locating their last kind and teaching them how to breed. Commanding a reservoir of knowledge that rivaled a great university's library, Leo is using his fledging student Jasper Van Ardsdale. When Jasper dies a virgin in a car accident with the car driven by Qusay (Q), Jasper discovers that he has all of eternity to contemplate his mistake, finds himself inhabiting the body of his friend Jarhead, with his sagging jeans, and his dopey benevolent and needy smile. While Qusay services the accident unscathed, full of memories and unexplained knowledge, Jasper is set upon a path of bodily possessions and carnal appetites. Eventually all of these characters come together as they ache for the next plane of existence, the darker urges, the baser ones: for sex, violence, dominance.

At this point, the novel descends into an horror cum action thriller as the Legion try to uncover the damage of years of deception, and destroy the Mogran who seem to be racing against time to replicate themselves. Ileana and Jasper seem to be the agents of change, but in the process, the narrative is just too confusing. Peck's historical allusions are interesting, but his prose style feels cheap and the novel feels strung together. While the underlying themes of sex and demons inhabiting our subconscious mind are sometimes compelling, and we are certainly immersed into those malevolent places where evil lurks, Body Surfing is mostly sensational and exploitative, where violence begets violence, and reflecting a unique literary talent that is somewhat wasted. Mike Leonard March 09.

Amazon and publishers are going to blow this distribution out of the water if they don't get pricing agreements resolved. They need to look at the demographics that illegally download and ascertain whether a DRM situation is really going to inhibit diehard piracy - and passing the cost of that on to legitimate consumers will be another notch in the belt for the death of the traditional publishing industry. I'm disappointed that Amazon isn't managing this more effectively and now wonder if buying a Kindle was a mistake.