Customer Reviews

The Perception Experiment

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Glover has taken several loosely connected concepts that may seem cliche when standing alone, and managed to tie them all together into a novel package that delights with the quality of nuance and form.

The prose is subtle, but powerful; themes such as alliteration and flow of words are used effectively to convey deeper meaning and enhance symbolism, and the choice of words is sometimes frantic, sometimes calculated, but always skillful.

The book is wet with symbolism, and subtle details drip from every page and catch the reader's eye and imagination. For anyone with an appreciation of world religions (Christianity certainly included), this book should prove an entertaining and thought-provoking experience.

Writer, activist, poet and owner/editor of ThirdEye Magazine ( http://www.thirdeyepublications.com ), Jason Glover has created an interesting post-apocalyptic world of religion, inter-weaved with science fiction and catastrophe in his first novel, The Perception Experiment. The core of this story is that a God loving and worshiping man begins to question his own spirituality, life and the community of followers around him after some minor epileptic type episodes. The character undergoes a mental transformation that eggs his new questioning of religion onward into a journey of self-discovery through feelings and ideas new to his clouded, God-fearing mind. Glover weaves a world where everything is not as it seems to the naked eye, and the never ending battle between God and Satan has claimed the main character as a pawn in the game of Armageddon. As the character becomes more aware of the inner workings of the world around him, he becomes angry with the way things are and his mission takes him to a new awareness. The climactic scene of demons and angels battling near a Tower of Babel-esque fortress is coupled with a dramatic and stunning twist of fate. Glover has created a world of his own with an intriguing plot and characters.

Yet, some of the writing almost seems forced at times,

and just about every other sentence is

broken.

With a space.

Or a new thought is broken out by a one-lined paragraph.

Paragraph after paragraph broken into bundles.

The writing style itself is an experimental oblivion of clichés and semi-poetic one-liners littered with bible passages and alliterative verse in first person present tense. At times, the narrative dilutes the idea of the story behind The Perception Experiment to the point that some of it seems to be lost. This could just be a part of the writing style Glover is going after, however, if the paragraphs were meshed solidly together, this book would likely be less than half the length and a bit less tedious through some parts. While the imagination and dedication for storytelling is present, parts of the story become a jumble of half finished thoughts and somewhat whiny yearnings by the main character to understand "the big picture". Perhaps the storytelling style is intentional in an effort to convey the confusion of the hero. The narrator at times seems to confuse the story line with his internal thinking blended in with the main point. The feeling of the author using 'filler' material to make a short story into a novel are hard to shake. There are a few minor editing blemishes and various lines that could be re-written and worked into a more cohesive idea.

All that being said, this self-published novel is quite the valiant effort, and with a bit of honing, Jason Glover could become a strong and visionary fiction writer in our time.

Originally Posted at: Randomville

http://www.randomville.com/article.html?article=676

This book is definitely imaginative and has an intriguing plot. As a rational attack on Christianity it falls short. Without spoiling anything for you, I'd say that the metaphor gets lost in itself.

The perspective makes you feel as though you're actually in the characters mind. Which clogs the story because of the characters quickly deteriorating mental state. Imagine if the character of River Tam from Joss Whedons Serenity/Firefly had written a book. There are deep insights mixed in with an overabundance of random gibberish/analogies oppressing the storyline. If you skim over the strange often meaningless meandering parts and get to the core of the book it makes it a lot more interesting.