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Lightland: A Soul's Journey (2012)

by Kenny Kemp(Favorite Author)

3.44 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1892442396 (ISBN13: 9781892442390)

languge

English

genre

Fantasy

publisher

Smashwords Edition

review 1: The first section about K'tanu's life was interesting and turned out to be the best material in the novel. My trouble began in the second section which zooms to a futuristic time and introduces Chris, an anthropologist, along with clumps of researched information that should have been edited out, and, a strange author intrusion describing ludicrous fiction and attributing it to the ACLU. That bit of prose read like pot-shot, revenge-oriented fiction. Worse--it was out-of-the-blue and somewhat jarring--and not in a good way. Because the author chose to call out the ACLU, a real organization with real accomplishments, the result was to trigger my reader 'propaganda ahead' alert. I put that behind me in hope of getting on with the story. Unfortunately, the writing felt clunky... more (uninteresting vocabulary and simplistic descriptions without the magic of Hemmingway) and the characters spoke and moved like puppets being set up to further the author's agenda. Now, I don't have an issue with agendas--we all have them, but opinions and speeches have to feel organic. At one point, a character says, "All intelligent people believe in God." Fine. A character can say that, but time after time, I saw the author's hand in the puppet moving the character's mouth. The effect, the dream of the story, was lost for me, and I skimmed. And skimmed. Too much falling into arms and weeping, dull "I love you" dialogue. Unexciting chase scenes. Finally, I sensed that the entire story was to further an agenda about faith and cloning that was simplistic, one-sided, and without any true persuasive insights. Smart characters 'got it' while the evil ones didn't. The world was drawn in a way to allow the agenda to be right. Fiction should be much more interesting than that. I will stop here because the novel made me grumpy and I won't inflict that on you. I don't mind disagreeing with an author, but the story, prose, and characters need to be more polished to make the journey, or debate, worthwhile. My apologies to Mr. Kemp, but I didn't like this novel.
review 2: I met Kenny Kemp at the SLC Costco where he was promoting his book. He is a very nice man, cordial and easy to talk to, and since I love reading, I decided to buy his book.The premise of the book is interesting. It's a romantic, science-fiction thriller that takes place in ancient Africa in the beginning, and then in the not too distant future. A deadly virus causes a worldwide pandemic that claims the lives of billions of people. The only hope of finding a cure comes from the mummified remains of an African man who was immune to the virus centuries before. Scientists successfully clone the mummy and try to discover the source of his immunity.While the idea is interesting, I was really quite dissapointed at how it was executed. The writing style is very descriptive, and Kemp has a beautiful way with words, but the way the story turned out overall was weak and, unfortunately, uninteresting. The plot advances slowly, trying to do a lot (such as form a relationship between the two main protagonists, develop an antagonist worthy of the reader's hate, create twists and unexpected turns, etc.) but ultimately fails in the long run. I figure it's never good to not even be halfway through a novel and wish I were finished so I could read something else. (My bad for not being able to leave a book half-read.)Long story short, the idea was great, Kemp's writing style is good, but the story lacked strength and depth. To Kemp's credit, it is obvious he did a lot of research and put a lot of thought into the story; however, the final execution of the story fell flat and left a lot to be desired. My advice: Skip this book if you don't like slow moving stories, read it if you have time and are interested by romantic, sci-fi novels. less

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