Customer Reviews

The Continent of Lies

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Anyone who has caught up with James Morrow in the 90s, as I have, will want to check out this earlier work. This book shows the same skewed sense of humor he later put to more acclaimed effect in BIBLE STORIES FOR ADULTS and TOWING JEHOVAH. The story concerns Quinjin, a reviewer of dreambeans--sort of a virtual reality device you consume. Someone has created a dreambean so horrible that the dreamers get trapped in the fantasy world, including Quinjin's daughter.

The Continent of Lies deals with a futuristic society where entertainment has evolved to an extreme level. Rather than watch TV or movies, you simply eat a "cephapple" and experience the story as a dream into which you are inserted as the main character. The cephapple--also known as a dreambean--is like a real apple (without seeds), and Morrow provides many examples that run the gamut of genre and type.

The central character, Quinjin, is a dreambean critic who comes across a bean so sinister that it has the potential to enslave humanity. He sets off on a quest to destroy the tree from which it sprang, along with his teenage daughter, his hedonistic "rich boy" friend, and his psychobiologist/dreamweaver girlfriend (not to mention a robot that longs to be a James Bond type secret agent).

Like his other books, CoL is funny, clever, and fairly well-plotted. I was put off, however, by the extensive "sci-fi-ish" vocabulary early in the book, and I almost put it down around page thirty. In fact, if I hadn't been a fan of Morrow's other works (especially Towing Jehovah), I probably wouldn't have continued. Still, once I got absorbed by the story, it was hard to put down, and there were enough twists and turns that I found I couldn't really predict what was going to happen.

All in all, a worthwhile and fun read, if not as "thinky" as some of his other books.

James Morrow has been on my to-read list for quite a while. I picked Continent of Lies up in a used book store. Reasonably entertaining. Also, fairly disappointing. The concept of dream apples is interesting as is their potential for disuse. The critic-as-hero, Quinjin, is an interesting sketch. I quite liked him as a kind of slouching anti-hero. I wish that the rest of the characters had been as interesting. The female characters were particularly flat, and frankly grating. Quinjin's daughter was little more than a prop designed to behave like a teenager and be at risk.

My biggest complaint was with the plot-- there were gaping holes in the logic and story. I kind of get that the plot is not precisely the point, but still. Morrow is largely known for his sardonic humor and tone. That definitely comes across in Continent of Lies. I think that I would prefer it in the context of subject matter where it seems more applicable-- Towing Jehovah sounds as though it would be more up both his alley and mine.