Customer Reviews

Brain Thief (Sci Fi Essential Books)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Give Brain Thief 50-60 pages and you will know if it is to your taste.

There is a dreamy and cluttered quality to this work. Nothing happens clearly or quickly, and characters are "cute" in a way that some may enjoy. The author often cannot walk his characters through a room without a description of the interior more appropriate to a set-designer's inventory than any real usefulness in propelling the story. Our protagonist has no particular "oomph" to him. The writing is clear and sometimes clever. The ideas are seductive. The pace is slow and the content rich. Not to my taste; give me clean syntax, fast action, and an author who is not teasing out the details. So... a negative for me, but maybe not you. What do you like?

The mystery starts right away when Bernal is just coming home from a business trip stopping by to see his boss. He gets the feeling something's not right. You start to see, as well, something is askew. Chasing his boss as she runs away and steals a car to get away. What is going on? Muriel, Bernals boss, leaves hints and messages to help steer him on the right path to help him with the mystery of Hesketh. Hesketh is an artificial intelligence that is on a sample run through the hillsides before it is actually sent into space.

I have to say I understood what was going on at the beginning of the book. Then there were a lot of strange things mentioned in which I got confused on. There was talk of Hesketh, Hess Corp - who worked on Hesketh before Madeline and Muriel took on the project with Muriels money, and Long Voyage - a cryobank for people wanting to wake up in the future. The confusion was not that I didn't completely understand what I was reading but mostly that I didn't believe what I was reading. I couldn't figure out if I was reading and comprehending it properly. (This being part of the mystery stuff.) I started to tally all the information I was getting separately in my head then piecing it together to see where the book was going. I was just a little ahead of the author, as just as I was doing this he then started to do it in the book. At around 150 pages into the book Bernal started to piece the puzzle together as well. Which when I hit this point I was so proud of myself as I was coming right up at the same lines as the main character. Hurray for me to understand and put it together! Then there was new information added nicely from this point to include in solving the mystery.

The best part of the book that kept me going was wondering who was leaving the messages and who was dead or alive, who was the serial killer, and what was going on with Hesketh (if it really worked). In the end I got the answers I was looking for. The mystery element was what kept me going in the book.

The characters unfold nicely as the book goes. There are a few characters you really don't truly meet and follow through but they feel as they are main characters by the way they are talked about, described, and messages passed on. I liked this angle as I really felt I got to know these characters and they really came through. In the end I really enjoyed most of the characters.

There were just a few minor unfavored points: There were a few spots that when things were brought up or thought, it almost felt like it didn't really flow or blend with what was going on. Almost like the information was needed and had to be told somewhere, but there were only a small few of these. Then there was the main character Bernal. I felt like I really didn't get to know him as well as the other characters. I mean I did get to know him but for some reason I didn't feel the connection as much with him as all the other characters. I liked him but that was all. He did do a great job of solving the mystery at hand and sticking to his guns on his ideas.

This has been a wonderful mystery with the science fiction element added in. Many of the characters have parallel characteristics which could point to them as the possible killer behind all of this. But there is one that fits all the pieces very well. Can you figure it out?

This is a difficult book for me to review--mainly because I'm not sure how I feel about it. When I finished Brain Thief, my initial reaction was more or less the mental equivalent of a shrug. OK, it's done, now I can read something else. As you might guess, I hadn't exactly found it to be a page-turner; I didn't have any trouble putting it down and going to sleep. In fact, it put me to sleep a couple of times. (But the dreams...)

This book is so different from my usual recreational fare of science fiction and fantasy that I didn't really know what to make of it. In a way, it's a murder mystery--but that doesn't become clear until well past the middle of the book, when the first body turns up. Most of the "action" consists of the hapless "hero"--Bernal--trying to track down his missing employer, Muriel, who has a penchant for leaving cryptic messages that serve mostly to frustrate poor Bernal. Alas, Bernal is fated to suffer worse adversity than mere frustration as he pursues his feckless quest; the accumulation of damage begins with a blow to the head from a cast-iron dog (a doorstop) wielded by a burglar who just HAS to borrow a car RIGHT NOW. The burglar needs the car because Muriel (whom Bernal has just glimpsed running out of her house in a pink nightie) has just stolen the burglar's (already stolen) car while said burglar was engaged in the pursuit of his trade in a neighbor's house. This appears to be a principled sort of burglar, as Bernal's car is promptly returned with an apologetic note.

As Bernal continues to play detective (a role for which he is emphatically unqualified), he encounters a diverse set of bizarre characters. The majority of these are unusually large and muscular women that may (or may not) have eccentric obsessions and relationships, sometimes even with other humans. Some of these individuals add to Bernal's collection of bruises, scratches, and abrasions, as do the occasional explosions of uncertain origin. You might think that all this sounds both exciting and funny; however I found it to be neither. Jablokov's style is described as "deadpan" on the cover blurb; maybe that's apt, but you could also call it "flat". None of the characters was likable enough to identify with, and the events were narrated in such a disconnected and cryptic manner that my dominant reaction was one of perpetual confusion.

Particularly frustrating (to me, not Bernal) is that several key characters never actually come on stage during the book. For example, the engineer who designs the artificial intelligence for a sort of planetary explorer vehicle that was originally meant to be landed on some alien planet (before the government canceled the project) is allegedly at the center of whatever is going on. We hear about her often, but she has no "speaking part" in the novel. Muriel, too, is notable by her persistent absence.

All this, and the fact that the entire plot makes very little sense kept me from being engaged by this book. I was thinking I'd probably give it two or three stars if I got around to writing a review of it at all.

That changed when I started to tell a friend about Brain Thief. I had meant to give him a quick synopsis; oddly, I found myself unable to stop talking. This was, I eventually realized, because there were so many interesting things to talk about in this book. The rich repertoire of weird characters, motivations, events, and odd facts in Brain Thief make it a book that cannot be lightly disregarded. I just wish I had the capacity to enjoy it more.

The Brain Thief is a fast-paced thriller that grips the audience from the moment Bernal receives the first odd message and never slows down as he follows clues and receives happenstance assistance to learn what is going on. The attention to detail is vast. The pace is slow because of it and this emerges you in the authors world.

This is not the kind of story I would typically read, but I thought I would give it a shot. For me it would be a three star book, but that wouldn't be wholly fair. Speaking with a friend of mine who loved it I can clearly understand that it is pretty damn good, just not for me. For this reason, I believe four stars is a fair figure for this unique story which afterall, I did enjoy and find fascinating in places.

Length:: 1:43 Mins

Alexander Jablokov returns to science fiction with Brain Thief, his first novel in the genre after several years. This imaginative mystery comes complete with a cast of eccentrics who in some form or fashion antagonize Bernal Haydon-Rumi, the man at the center of this strange journey and struggle for answers. When Bernal returns to his wealthy employer's home after a business excursion, simplicity unravels, and he is left with a puzzle to solve that involves his boss, a woman who spends idle time funding strange projects, and an AI device designed to explore other planets, as well as an activist, a local murderer, and a problem-riddled cryogenic specialist, among other memorable and equally complicated characters. In order to figure out what is amiss, he must stay on the trail of his employer and utilize the personal resources at his disposal: cleverness, persistence, and a strong desire to understand. What will he uncover in his search for answers, and is an executive assistant's life really supposed to be this strange? Jablokov's newest novel is compelling, bizarre and difficult to put down. It will be an ideal reading for science fiction enthusiasts and readers who enjoy creative stories that never seem to stop twisting and evolving. Brain Thief is highly recommended to readers of Jablokov's previous works as well.

This one reminds me of Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon. Dectective story, with oddball characters. Not the norm you see in detective stories. It has enough of the familiar detective elements to keep you interested and the oddball characters keep you offbalance and not knowing exactly what to expect next.

Very different in atmosphere than previous Jablokov's I have read. But worth the read.

Wealthy Muriel Inglis sends an odd message to her only employee executive assistant Bernal Haydon-Rumi. Unable to comprehend what his employer wants and why she failed to go to the art gallery as planned; although he just came home from a South Dakota business trip, Bernal rushes over to her home, but she is not there and the house looks like a cyclone came through it.

However, as he ponders what next he notices a woman he realizes is her fleeing the house in a nightgown. He chases after her, but she escapes by stealing her neighbor's Mercedes. The vehicle's owner prevents Bernal from following by knocking him out. When Bernal regains consciousness he notices that his car is gone, but after cleaning up in his employer's home, he sees his car is back. Frantic for Muriel's safety and receiving messages from her he does not understand, Bernal visits Madeline Ungaro, who is working on a space exploratory AI project Hesketh funded by Muriel and loathed by private investigator Charis Fen who warns the desperate amateur sleuth to watch his back.

Although over the top of the Black Hills, The Brain Thief is a fast-paced thriller that grips the audience from the moment Bernal receives the first odd message and never slows down as he follows clues and receives happenstance assistance to learn what is going on. Fans will enjoy accompanying Bernal and fully appreciate the irony of his sleuthing throughout the hero's cat and mouse chase.

Harriet Klausner

BRAIN THIEF (2009) is a collection of random scribblings, set somewhere in place and time, intended to have a plot. It is all indeed a mystery - a mystery what the story is about... a mystery what the characters are talking about (I always have the feeling that the characters are "in" on some inside joke that I don't know about)... a mystery how they just seem to "show up together" at various points in the story. A real mystery.

I think I might care about what the mystery is about... but then, maybe not. I'll leave it all as a mystery to you too.