Dead Forever: Awakening Book

Dead Forever: Awakening (Book 1 of a trilogy) by William Campbell brings us into a world of human beings who have cultivated reincarnation into a procedure conceptually as simple as an appendix removal. You die and you get a brand new adult body, complete with all the emotional and experiential memories you possessed at death for an eternity of cycles. Sounds pretty good. Sign me up for bungee jumping, parachuting, etc.

But not so fast. In this world, your replenished self faces a life of monotonous conformity under a governing body called The Association. That is unless you join the rebels exiled on a distant planet at war with The Association. It's a long, theoretically futile war for both sides because whenever anyone dies, they can reincarnate, and come back with a fresh corporeality. But here's the kicker: only as long as they know how. That's where The Association has gained an edge, by developing methods to induce amnesia. This way they hope to gradually de-incarnate the rebels, make them dead forever.

Most of this the reader knows from the back cover, which puts us ahead of such an amnesia-induced man, Carl the protagonist, with whom we open the story. It's a strong opening, full of dramatic action and sensory imagery. Carl is a drifter and all he knows is his dreary life, which is plagued with vivid but, to him, random dreams and images. He mentions this offhandedly to some diner waitress who then brings him to the attention of The Association. They send out their henchmen, the BOBs (Carl's term for them for their Black on Black attire), to apprehend Carl. Trusting instinct over knowledge, Carl scrambles to escape, killing as many BOBs as he can.

Just in time, friends from his forgotten past rescue Carl and whisk him away to the rebel planet. He doesn't trust them at first but at least they're not shooting at him. They reveal his actual name to be Adam and that he's their close friend as well as one a rebel leader and one of their best fighters. Otherwise, they are less than forthcoming with information, insisting he must fill in the blanks on his own. That includes the most important detail, how to reincarnate. Until he figures this out, his life is vulnerable to irreversible termination. Essentially, Adam's (Carl's) quest, or goal, for most of this first book of the trilogy is to figure out what the hell's going on, without getting killed. The first-person present tense narration ensures the reader shares his experience, including the frustration he must feel.

A series of scenes brings Adam (and the reader) incrementally closer to full realization as he (re)develops his relationships with the three rescuers: the oversexed Madison, the techie-nerd Matt and the more or less normal, Dave. The antagonism between the rebels and The Association parallels the traditional generation gap; these rebels are young and party while the few we see from the Association are portrayed as older and dour. Adam and his friends have no jobs, no monetary concerns, and little fear. True, they are in a war but it's as if they'll get to that when they feel like it. In the meantime, they'll goof off.

By Chapter Six (of seven), Adam clues in and the restoration of his memory brings a restoration of superior powers, including the ability to exit his body. Now his quest changes from one of seeking knowledge to one of action, and of rescuing his true love. After some silly scenes of comic relief preparing for this escapade, he commandeers his friends and returns to the planet of the Association disguised as the enemy.

The ending is satisfying enough for a first book of a trilogy from a plotting standpoint. There is a resolution to the immediate purpose but overall it leaves plenty of mysteries and unanswered items for the subsequent two books. These include the lack of information about intricacies of reincarnation (what about suicide?), how or why things are the way they are, what's in it for the Association to enslave and oppress their subjects, and why they are named The Association.

At least I hope these answers come. I found the simplistic portrayal of The Association as evil frustrating; the line between good and evil is too casually but distinctly drawn. When you make your protagonist's enemies into idiots, when you stack the deck as is done in the headquarters infiltration scene, you risk losing plausibility. And for a book that demands a lot of suspension of disbelief as this one does, that's an even greater risk.

The book as a product is well produced with a stylish but classic and sexy sci-fi cover. The proofreading is immaculate and the prose is often vivid and dramatic, and exhibits dexterity with words, as in the following:

*****

The forest engulfs our craft. A cacophony rises as the ship slices through smaller branches slapping and cracking, then deeper thuds as heavy trunks pound the hull. Combined with the howling engines, the orchestra of noise progresses toward a crescendo, which I fear, concludes in one harsh bang when we smack to ground.

Madison races around the cockpit while Dave stays focused on bringing us in as best he can. The landing pads hit the ground, sending a concussion throughout the ship. Tortured metal screams, trees snap and splinter, shrieking landing pads scrape and rumble. The craft is coming undone--one sharp snap then twisting metal, the floor drops from beneath us. The sagging hull burrows into soil and a tidal wave of loose dirt washes over the viewports. The sudden deceleration sends me and Madison soaring across the cockpit, and the craft comes to an abrupt halt. After a thunderous finale, the torturous symphony ebbs into an eerie quiet.

*****

On occasion, this goes too far, resulting in sentences that sounded thick or had an awkward rhythm. Still, even though at times overly poetic, the writing worked best when we are firmly in Adam's focused mind, and when he's alone.

After the promising opening, I didn't really care much about Adam and his friends or what happened to them. Part of the problem is the dialogue, which is often not more than banter, ranges from the juvenile sexual innuendos while Madison tries to bed Adam to attempts at sophisticated topics, such as belief in God, reincarnation, generalized philosophies, and an odd theory of time. The contrast of maturity within the protagonist's internal monologue is particularly startling. Read one passage of poetic description and you think he's an adult; read another where he shows his horniness, an adolescent.

Maybe age is to blame for my inability to cheer for the rebels. Younger, less fickle readers might identify better with these characters and see their cause as the dream of a parent-less authority-resisting utopia. One character I did like was Madison. Her capriciousness came across the most believable and entertaining; unfortunately, her part diminishes after Chapter Six, although I'm sure it will return in the next entries of this trilogy.

That brings me to the difficulty of reviewing the first book of a trilogy by itself, which is essentially one-third of the story, and the one-third burdened with setting everything up. Some of the negative points mentioned above may appear differently in the broader context. The care taken in the production of this first volume would justify some benefit of the doubt.