Author: Rose Mambert
Publisher: Pink Narcissus Press
Rating: WARTY!
Not to be confused with Narcissus Dreaming by Dabney Stuart!
I finished this novel and felt like I hadn’t read anything. To be more accurate, I felt like I'd read detailed notes which had been prepared for several upcoming novels, and now I should look forward to reading the first draft of one of them. Instead, I got what felt like a mashup of three different novels, one of which was about a movie company making a movie, another of which was about a literal angel of mercy, and the third of which was about the existence on Earth of a handful of visiting alien shape-shifters. None of these three pieces fitted together in any coherent manner, and the result was entirely dissatisfying for me. If I had to choose, I'd choose the angel of mercy because he (or she - it's that kind of a novel) was more interesting, if least featured.
The novel is quite short - only 140 pages or so - which was fortunate for me because it meant I could finish it. Yeah, I get that there are two alien species on Earth: shape shifters and angels. I get that the shape-shifters are being recruited for obvious reasons because they can hide in plain sight, but I have no idea what this novel is about or where it was supposed to be going.
Some of it was beautifully written, other parts so tedious I wanted to skip them. I did skip bits here and there, but I read the bulk of it and I could make no sense of it at all. I have no idea why there was a movie company involved in this story, or why it was relevant that there was a movie being made involving a shape-shifter. That seemed like a totally unrelated story to me.
The 'aliens' were so human in their behavior and motivations - they smoked cigarettes, for goodness sakes, and could get drunk on alcohol! They didn't seem alien at all, more like weird or mutant humans. I had no idea why the 'angel' character was there. He seemed to have so little to do with the main thrust of the story that it made no sense to me, but what the heck - we tossed in a movie company, why not add an angel to the mix?
The shape-shifters made just as little sense. Evidently the shape-shifters are banned from Earth, yet they still come here. How they get in is a mystery given how easy it is to detect them. Why they would even want to come is a greater mystery. None of this is dealt with or even alluded to. Instead we’re dropped right into the middle of what behaves like it’s an ongoing, and long-running series. It isn’t, but we get no introduction to this world, and no conclusion.
The shape-shifters are a pride species, living in tightly-knit groups, yet they cannot feel emotion?! They reproduce every five years as a group, and it's downright dangerous for them to be away from the group when they reach sexual maturity or when they come into heat - so again, why do they come here alone? It made no sense at all. This is yet another example of a novel where even a rudimentary knowledge of the Theory of Evolution would have made a big difference to the depictions of different species.
In conclusion I cannot recommend a novel as dissipated and dissatisfying as this one is!
