SUMMARY: A brutal story told through three different genres that centers around the discovery of a strange pool that can revive and duplicate any creatures that fall into it. Brilliantly realized, the novel still suffers a little from some flaws common to first-time fiction.
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Parsons has written a couple nonfiction books, but this is his first fiction novel. The tale mostly concerns two men -- Warren Groves, a wild west officer with murder in his bones, and Gideon Long, a man made cruelly desperate by his wealthy father's emotional abuse. After a train robbery/childbirth gone wrong, the two men cross paths and end up discovering a sort of Fountain of Youth that has the power to revive them every time they die, and which also begins regularly producing duplicates of their past selves. As time passes, these duplicates begin to cause problems, and the true nature of the magical pool is revealed to be far more sinister than it seems.
Although I am not a big fan of Westerns, I was immediately drawn into the tale by Parsons' slick, minutely-detailed prose. His depiction of the big train robbery, for instance, enthralled me in a way few books have in recent years. Furthermore, Parsons' construction of this alternate world is so rich and fully-realized that it is truly impressive. Astounding even. The story is unique, and although the elements of it are often times bewilderingly complex, Parsons' sumptuous prose keeps the story from feeling like a chore.
Parsons does succumb to a flaw common to first-time writers of fiction: overwriting. As far as flaws go, this is the kind you WANT to have, especially if your writing is as accomplished as Parsons'. Still, the book has multiple moments where Parsons' prose seems to coil into itself, admiring its own beauty, and although the writing is, indeed, beautiful, its self-indulgent tone often detracts from the story itself. This is especially true of the very beginning of the book (which was written with such exaggerated poeticism that I shut the book and nearly did not open it again).
This leads to a second problem: there is no tension to the tale. It is masterfully told, brilliantly constructed, and vividly imagined, but there is a lack of humanity to the story. Parsons attempts to use Groves' and Long's rivalry to give juice to the character-driven aspects of the tale, but these two men are not particularly sympathetic or relatable, and their rivalry fades in import as the tale gains scope. In light of the vast richness of the story, this isn't a terribly big problem, although it does render meaningless several key elements of the book. For instance, a character named Milo makes a critical but baffling decision at the climax of the novel, irrevocably altering the shape of the story for every character. Although it is clear he made the decision for deeply emotional reasons, even the most careful of readers would have difficulty accepting or comprehending those reasons. At what should be the tensest moment of the story, there is mostly just confusion.
Parsons touches on concepts of humanity, individuality, family, love, memory, history, and power, but his tale sprawls so much that what lessons he hopes to illuminate get lost in the noise. Once again, if he'd had the talents of a more ruthless editor, he could've cut the clutter and delivered one of the greatest sci-fi novels I've ever read. Instead, there are lovingly crafted passages that seem to have little bearing on the book (transcripts of phone calls home, overlong descriptions of people navigating hidden passageways, and at least two of the most graphic and brutal scenes of cannibalism I've ever read, both of them nauseating me so much I had to stop reading for awhile). As a Lit major, of course, I can see what Parson's is trying to do, the morals or symbols he's trying to convey, but at the same time, I can also see that they're only secondary to the main thrust of his story, and therefore they slow the book down.
The second portion of the book -- written in the form of a hard-boiled detective thriller -- is the only part of the tale written from the first person point of view (that of Casper Cord, a sort of private eye). Casper's story is meant to tie together the first and third portions of the book, and although it does that in a solid way, Parsons' decision to let Cord tell the tale was distracting as well. I will reiterate: I loved Parsons' prose and admired his ability to shift and bend genres, but he dropped the ball here. Cord tries to talk like your typically noirish detective, referring to people as "palookas" and fist-fighting as "chin music," but in the next breath Casper will describe in over-lush detail a "conflagration" or "spiracle" or "ossuary" as opposed to simply saying saying "fire" or "hole" or "bone orchard."
I know I am spending far more time on the negatives than a four-star review might warrant, but that's because I was so impressed and blown away by the rest of the book that these minor complaints stood out in greater and greater detail as the pages turned. If you don't have a weak stomach, if you like complex sci-fi, and if you are a patient reader with a love of great prose over great characters, then I highly recommend this tale. I will definitely be buying Parsons' next book, and I'm hoping that a little practice and experience will have sanded away these rough spots and left Parsons' with the makings of my next favorite writer.
