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Lyda
Morehouse’s ARCHANGEL PROTOCOL has been staring at me off the
new racks of Uncle Hugo’s in Minneapolis, MN for several
months now. Every time I went in, the book would be tempting me,
but I could never quite bring myself to pay for it new. A couple
weeks ago, though, it finally showed up used, and I snatched it
up without a second thought.
A brief
conceptual sketch: ARCHANGEL PROTOCOL takes place in a fairly
standard cyberpunk setting, with the uber-powerful corporations
swapped out for theocracies. The main character is a private
detective who, like all PIs in popular fiction, gets caught up
in things far beyond her control: In this case, mysterious
angels have been seen on the ‘net and recognized as official
miracles by the various theocracies and most of the world’s
population.
Let me be up
front in saying that I didn’t do this book any favors by
reading it immediately after CYTEEN. But, on the other hand, the
book didn’t do many favors for itself, either.
Morehouse’s
writing is workman-like: Functional, with the occasional
flourish – but just as frequently crude. Sometimes painfully
crude. But for a first novel, the prose is solid and shows some
promise.
One problem,
though, is that Morehouse can’t let her characters just exist
in a space. They constantly have to be doing something. Thus
even the simplest of conversations is drawn out into a long
affair of detailed stage business – coffee being consumed,
cups being moved, chairs squeaking. The technique is frequently
turned towards ‘subtle’ exposition, but the result in
practice is usually a jackhammer mixed with out of character
behavior.
For example, in
the first couple of pages in the book the main character
provides us with exposition about her current tech-poor
situation. She wraps this up by moving into the first scene,
starting out by talking to herself about her computer: “Not
even a graphical interface any more.” The problem here is that
the author has lost track of her past tense telling of the story
and the events of the story itself: The line of dialogue only
makes sense in the context of the exposition which has preceded
it, and thus only makes sense if the character is somehow aware
of her future self telling the story. Thus the moment is out of
character, a false note, and a clumsy bit of writing.
The
world-building also comes across as very hollow. The central
conceit is that the entire world has turned away from science
and become fanatically religious as a result of the Medusa bombs
(like atom bombs, but with a different special effect) used to
end World War III. Morehouse repeats this assertion several
times, in the hope, I suppose, that it will become more
convincing in the repetition. The details don’t hold together
very well, either: The world has become fanatically religious to
the point where it’s illegal to not belong to a religion…
but not fanatical enough that people actually care which
religion you belong to. Electric cars have been adopted due to
the same shortage of oil which triggered World War III… but
they use a huge infrastructure of electrified tubes rather than
just running off of battery power.
Even the
technical details are off, which is disconcerting because she
likes to lay them on thick. For example, when a simple web
search causes the “processors to start whirring”, I’m left
a little baffled. For one thing, processors don’t whir. And I
can’t figure out why either the cooling fans or a disk drive
would start whirring as the result of a web search.
Another example:
In a novel of theocracies and angelic visitations, its not too
surprising that theology plays a major role in the novel. But,
again, the handling is crude. Morehouse starts off on the wrong
foot, in my opinion, by claiming that throwing a well-known
Bible quotation (“let he who is without sin throw the first
stone”) into a preacher’s face represents a cutting argument
capable of shocking the preacher into mute silence for several minutes. In a more general sense, I just find Morehouse’s use
of theology to be extraordinarily dull. With the great wealth of
Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Hindu literature to draw upon,
Morehouse seems perfectly content to remain complacently
pedestrian.
And then there
are the continuity glitches, which sap whatever strength the
work might have like a biblical plague. For example, the main
character has been receiving letters from her ex-partner. Early
in the book we’re told that she hasn’t read the letters –
in fact, she hasn’t even opened them. But the next time the
letters come up, she has read them (despite the fact we’ve
seen her every waking moment since being told she hadn’t read
the letters).
In some cases,
these continuity screw-ups are mind-numbingly clumsy. For
example, at one point in the book two characters are setting up
a meeting place. First, one character proposes Yankee Stadium
and the other character voices some minor objections. Then,
later on the SAME PAGE, the other character proposes Yankee
Stadium as if it had never been mentioned before.
Little flaws
like that begin to add up to a lot of frustration.
To make matters
worse, the plot is extremely predictable. I don’t think
there’s a single thing that happens in the entire novel which
isn’t clearly telegraphed at least a dozen pages earlier. Even
the “surprise” ending gets telegraphed two pages before it
happens.
Part of the
reason for this is that the main character suffers from a severe
case of Stupid Protagonist Syndrome(TM). On one page she can
tell another character that she believes X may be true. Two
pages later, when another character tells her that they believe
X to be true, she can only think of them as insane. And she does
this more than once. Oh, and here’s a hot tip: If you’re a
wanted fugitive that the government has tracked down multiple
times while on the run, returning to your private office for no
particular reason is probably a really dumb idea.
And finally, at
the end of the book, out of left field, we get a quick dose of
sexism mixed with the magical superpowers of the menstrual
cycle. Gah.
To the book’s
favor, there are a lot of neat ideas packed between the covers:
Technology, theology, mutation, psychology, sociology, and more
are all played with in a variety of interesting ways. On top of
that, the plot is intriguing and filled with a lot of promise.
But neither the ideas nor the plot are taken to that
next level, and the execution is just painfully lacking. So the
book gets a D in my mind – and its only getting that because
the ideas have enough spark in them to make the book an edible
piece of mediocre brain candy.
GRADE:
D |
