Blue Light (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "Orde stood atop the flat stone in Garber Park-talking..." (more)
Key Phrases: puppy trees, stone liquor, tree cloth, Gray Man, Juan Thrombone, Winch Fargo (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Despite the success of his color-coded Easy Rawlins series, Walter Mosley dares, with Blue Light, to go where few mystery writers have gone before. The novel is pure (if not simple) science fiction, less evocative of Philip Marlow than Philip K. Dick. It begins during the 1960s, when flashes of extraterrestrial blue light enter the bodies of several Northern Californians. Those struck by the flashes immediately take on superhuman abilities. Mosley's narrator, Chance, is not himself a recipient of the heaven-sent beams, but after a blood transfusion from the leader of the Blues, his consciousness expands. The biracial, suicidal Thucydides scholar becomes a supernal historian of his new, blue-inflected peer group. He dreams of a "far-flung future, when science is not estranged from the soul" and where human beings will see the world with the purified vision of his enlightened brethren. Still, he is powerless in the face of the Gray Man--a vicious incarnation of evil who seems intent on wiping out the entire Blue population. Somber and violent, bizarre and oddly reverent, Blue Light marks a promising new direction for Mosley. What's more, the dangling threads at the end intimate a vast epic to come (Mosley has suggested that a trilogy awaits) and a literary challenge that's anything but Easy. --Patrick O'Kelley

From Publishers Weekly

You have to admire Mosley: with a gilt-edged brand-name character (Easy Rawlins)in his locker, he still can't resist venturing off in new directions. Sometimes his effort to break new ground works beautifully, as in RL's Dream; sometimes it's an interesting misfire, as in Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned.This time, however, it seems plain misguided. Blue Light is an odd mixture of science fiction and inspirational fable about a sort of cosmic ray that enters into a handful of people, giving them superhuman faculties, and the struggle some of these ultra-evolved folk have with the spirit of Death, who has also been granted special powers. Beginning in Berkeley during the hippie love days (well observed, as Mosley's West Coast scenes always are) and eventually migrating into the deep forests of the Sierra, where a group of "blues" create a sort of idyllic pastoral retreat, the story is mostly told from the viewpoint of Chance, a half-breed drifter. One of its more original aspects is that several of the characters, enacting roles similar to those often given by other writers to Native American shamans and seers, are black. There are some jolting scenes of sexuality and violence, and some arresting images, like the vocalizing trees experienced by the "blues"; but the biology is insufficiently imagined, the time sequence is sometimes confusing and a sort of vague poesy that is a far cry from Mosley's typically sinewy prose is the predominant style. Time-Warner audio; author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1st edition (November 2, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316570982
• ISBN-13: 978-0316570985
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (55 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,050,137 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Deeply talented author-- shallow plot, February 11, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Blue Light (Mass Market Paperback)

The only thing that kept me reading "Blue Light" until the end was Mosley's general skill as a writer. His style reminded me of two SF greats-- Octavia E. Butler and Tad Willams. Hardly faint praise.But Mosley forgot to include the one thing these two luminaries always have in their books in abundance and that is scope. The events of the book don't really seem to change anything; they only concern a handful of characters. Certainly the reader doesn't feel, as with Butler, that the fabric of society, even the nature of humanity, will be changed by the blue light. Outside the concerns of the main characters, it is business as usual for Planet Earth. While it is irkome to think of what this book could have been with a plot constructin equal to Mosley's writing talents, I have to applaud him for making the foray into science fiction. The genre definitely needs more ethnic diversity in its authors. I hope Mr. Mosley will try again-- this time with a better plot!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Stephen King Meets the Wizard of Oz, July 5, 2001

By	Bonnie Weingarten "b_weingarten" (Media, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blue Light (Mass Market Paperback)

I picked up this book in anticipation of a discussion with my monthly book club this coming weekend. We had previously read RL's Dream and I found that difficult to follow but considered it historical fiction. Now we enter the Blue Light. This book had none of the lyrical language I found so endearing in RL's Dream. This was a violent journey through a twisted utopia with no purpose. In a bow to the 60's, this was an acid trip gone very bad with a short fun period in the middle. The meanies were cardboard cartoon characters and the goodies were always running from them like Dorothy, Tin Man and Scarecrow through the poppy fields. I can't wait to see who picked this in our book club...Thanks for letting me share.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Blue Light - either you see it, or you don't, May 26, 1999

By	[e-mail] "bruce.johnson@predicti... (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

I prefer Mosely's departures from the predictable, and in taking the Chance on Blue Light, received something more profound: a spectral analysis of the colors of human nature, magnified by the simple but brilliant artifice of light itself. The writing in this novel is superbly imaginative; not an overbearing mountain of details but an evocation, a description of what matters, not of matter. Reading about the mind of Grey Man and his tormented host was a marvelously hideous exploration, at once repulsive and sympathetic, suggesting a portrait of schizophrenia. Winch Fargo was likewise a fascinating treatment on evil and identity, the danger of one who has superhuman will and strength but without purpose. I marvel at Mosely's use of language and idea to invent such an original work. The story has many switchbacks and some are drawbacks: as the light strikes many in different places, convergence takes some time to occur. This will not sit well with those who like continuous action and strict sequential progress. The characters, by dint of Blue Light, become outcasts, wanderers and drifters, and as such cannot be given the more substantial treatment that say a similar Socrates is given in Always Outnumbered. The beach scenes therein are recalled in the Blues leader Orde's enlightenment. Again this work is more poetic than prosaic, so be prepared. Mosely is not shy about sex (he borders on the voyeuristic) or violence either. The traditional sci-fi genre fans will be annoyed by the fact that the powers exhibited by the Blues are intangible, and that their discovery by the world at large is as difficult to pin down as an alien corpse. This is a tantalizing angle: that "the revolution will not be televised," and as others have said may be going on as we speak. The notion was entertaining in itself that while I was reading a meta-fantasy (in the mind of Chance all along, and Mosely of course). That's one of the chances you take when you take this on. Mosely makes you work for what you get out of this book. Take a transfusion of uncommon perspective and get an increased wonder at the broadband frequencies of human possibility as your receipt.