Review: the story doesn't go where you think it will go...
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 12 22, 2012
If you read the reviews of Lethe by A. Sparrow, the word strange comes up quite a bit. Strange and dark. I would add to that odd and weird. But odd, weird, strange, and dark in the best sense.This is a really good story. It is hard to get your fingers wrapped around it, though. Lethe is the River of Forgetfulness, from which the dead drink to forget their earthly lives so that they may reincarnate. When the main character, Dan, washes ashore he has not forgotten his prior life, but he is lost, confused and disoriented.I think the thing that is hard to pin down about this book is that the world Dan wakes up to is rather abstract, and yet that abstractness has been captured in detail and specificity. There is a lot of wandering in this book, and it slips into sci-fi with entities living/existing in cells and membranes. But that doesn't define the story either. Because it is balanced with concrete passages about Dan's life prior to his arrival in Lethe. Or wherever it is he actually is.This is one of those undiscovered gems. I haven't read a lot of Ursula LeGuin but it makes me think of the Lathe of Heaven. Perhaps, better done.I do like the other main character Marco Sabonis. I liked the ending a lot because the story doesn't go where you think it will go. Not every loose end is cauterized, but you get a nice sense of Ahh...good story.It makes your eye twinkle, because it's rather clever. I read it in about twenty-four hours.  If you are up for something that really is different, and hard to categorize, but very clever, well-written, and kind of fun in a dark way, pick it up. Last I checked it was FREE on Amazon.