Towers Kindle Edition

To begin with, I have to confess something I didn't realize until recently: I hate writing reviews. It feels like doing homework, only on something that's supposed to be fun. So, I have to feel really compelled to write a review these days. The reason for today's compulsion is this year's class of New Bizarro Authors, courtesy of Eraserhead Press. This is one of the few annual events that still brings me some joy in a frustratingly adult, postmodern, miserable, hand-wringing, finger wagging, bureaucratic existence. For a few hours, Karl Fischer helped me forget about that existence. Perhaps even project it onto the protagonists of his novella.

Towers is a postapocalyptic tale that feels refreshing due to its complete lack of zombies, power grid failures or any of the other claptrap that has become as standard as Bill O'Reilly hanging up on callers must be to talk radio listeners.

It's a love story that stabs you and hurts you in the same way that Tiffany Scandal's There's No Happy Ending did, because although two lovers are the main characters, their love is treated as if it's inconsequential to anything. They are forced to live in what I could only understand to be giant robots with communities of mutated lifeforms living inside. All of this in the name of religion. Karl doesn't beat you over the head with religious commentary, though.

The true stars here are the combined love of Alti and Quatra and the prose of the novella itself. Fischer definitely seems to have had his thesaurus handy here as he plows through stygian imagery with the most careful descriptions. No stilted sentences here. The whole thing flows like poetry.Read more ›

So wow.

I was surprised and delighted at the quality of this novella. Karl Fischer has some CHOPS when it comes to throwing down words on paper. This dude can WRITE.

So I’ll admit I was intrigued was this book’s basic conceit before I even read one word: two lovers, a man and a woman, finish their 1000-year sentence as sentient guard towers helping mankind’s last survivors fight tirelessly against kaiju monsters from the sea. They expected to enter the afterlife together, as they had been promised, but instead are rendered back to their small and ineffective human forms and are separated by continents with no knowledge of how to reunite.

Like WTF??!!! What kind of plot is that?! It sounded crazy! And it was. But Fischer treats his subjects and plot with both gravity and care. As such TOWERS ends up reading like a mind-bending love song, a poetic descent into a world torn asunder, a parable for what happens to us when love and live too strongly and how that may warp us, transform us, turn us into things we never intended to be, and an homage to the resiliency of that inner voice that encourages you to keep fighting even against impossible odds.

There is SO MUCH going on in here, delivered to you by way of zigzagging, colorful prose and bizarre apocalyptic imagery, this book basically DEMANDS a second read, if not to fall deeper in love with Fischer’s use of language, then to further decipher the hidden (and, at times, obfuscated) meaning behind every word.

For a debut novel, this is a meteor. I seriously enjoyed it.

This is a heartfelt, gut-wrenching love story about two people that are deeply in love but separated by fear and distance, unable to understand the ravaged world and bodies that they have been thrust into. Alti must confront some of his fondest memories to inflate his courage sacs and bolster himself against kaiju, uncertainty, and the distance he must go to be with his love again.
This is a beautifully written novel that has some bitchin' giant monster fights, but also an enormous heart.

A very imaginative view of a grim future with the hope of eternal love. The writing is poetic and engaging and the story moves in unexpected directions through a world where humanity has evolved in unexpected ways. I look forward to reading more by this author especially a full length novel with plenty of time to develop a cast of characters and fully explore the worlds he creates.

Wow, this book was amazing! Good read cover to cover.