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Angel Land (2008)

by Victor J. Banis(Favorite Author)

3.77 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1935053051 (ISBN13: 9781935053057)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Quest

review 1: Harvey Milk Walton is no hero. Contrarily, he has learned early-on that his number one priority is to look out for “Numero Uno”. He lives in a dystopian society at the end of the 21st century, and it seems the world around him is dying. It is a society in which Christian Fundamentalist ideology has become the rule of law, and people like Harvey are regarded as sexual deviants. Harvey is gay.The story’s central character finds himself on-the-run from the time he is very young. Eventually he is sent to live in the gay ghetto which was formerly known as the Castro District, and here he ultimately finds something of which he never before dared to dream. A family. Harvey also finds love, but the man who steals his heart happens to also be a Fundie—a Christian Fundamenta... morelist.Sadly, all of the people that Harvey grows to cherish face the reality of impending death. They all are infected with the Sept virus, a mutation of HIV for which there is no vaccine. The only hope that Harvey and his comrades have of survival is a drug which the Ministry of Health has developed. The drug must be taken daily, and has a 97% success rate, but its distribution is strictly regulated by the Fundamentalist-controlled government. When a zealous fundamentalist senior elder is challenged by Harvey and his circle of friends, a ban on the distribution of this life-saving drug is imposed. People are dying, and Harvey feels helpless. He must look within himself to see if he indeed possesses the qualities necessary to be a true hero. He may need to start looking out for more than just himself.After I read a book—any book—I generally spend some time reflecting upon what I have read. Although I admit that the standards by which I tend to judge a book’s merit may be rather simplistic, they are what they are. At a certain point I simply have to ask myself, “Do I like it…or not?” Basically, the factor which influences me most in the formulation of this opinion is whether or not the story had an emotional impact upon me. The way an author’s words make me feel is what I remember most. Angel Land moved me in a way unlike anything else I’ve ever read. “Poignant” doesn’t begin to describe the message (or messages) of this story, and its impact upon me as a reader, gay man, and Christian is beyond significant.There was one particular phrase used by the author which was so profound that it literally stopped me in my tracks. It so concisely sums up the theme of this story, that I cannot complete this review without quoting it. “They had justified their evil in Christ's name...How Christ must weep.”As far as the writing, what can I say? It’s Victor J. Banis! The more he writes, the better he gets. He’s so skilled at infusing wry humor and sardonic wit into his prose, that devouring one of his stories is like indulging in a delicious dessert. The plot devices he uses capture the reader’s interest and hold that interest straight-through until the last word of the book. He describes details in a manner that can only be described as poetic.In Angel Land, the author uses a very unconventional method of portraying multiple points-of-view. The voice alternates from first person to third person. It begins as a narration by the central character and then switches to a third-person account of the secondary characters’ points-of-view. If I were to have any criticism of this book, it would be that this device was initially somewhat confusing to me. I do have to say, though, that it was presented in a seamless manner, and once I was used to it, I felt it really did work.Reading this book was genuinely a pleasure, and I definitely would classify it as a “must-read”. I cannot emphasize enough how highly I recommend it. In fact, I feel quite frankly unqualified to even be critiquing such a masterful work. Buy the book!! You won’t regret it.
review 2: I read this in 2009 and just realized I never put a review on Goodreads. Now I must remedy that situation!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Angel LandByVictor J. BanisPublisher: QuestISBN-13 978-1935053057224 pagesAvailable: Print & Amazon Kindle Angel Land by Victor Banis will keep you off balance like nothing you’ve ever read before. It switches not only p.o.v., sometimes within the same chapter, but switches voice as well, from the first person narrative of the escapee, Harvey Milk Walton, to the third person thoughts of other characters. Only a master like Banis could pull this off without driving the reader crazy. It is sly, sardonic, and funny. It’s also frightening and will make your scalp crawl with the feeling that Banis is channeling George Orwell and you’re reading the next 1984.Angel Land is a tale set a century or so in the future, after the global society has been devastated by wars and pandemics, all the things we see now, carried to their ultimate end. It was an end that came “not with a bang but a whimper”, to quote T.S. Eliot. Among the other curses of the 20th and 21st centuries, the HIV virus has mutated repeatedly until reaching the always fatal HIV-VII, known as Sept, a virus so virulent it does not even require human contact. And there is a soul-chilling reason for the mutation, one that will make you gasp.Into this vacuum of power came The Reverend Elihu Gaston, founder of The Fundamental Christian Church. Is he the antichrist? Though such a thing isn’t suggested in the book, as one who read the Bible many times when I was younger I couldn’t help thinking that he certainly fit the requirements. The other churches were swallowed up by Gaston’s new church; everyone not a believer in Gaston was suspect, especially Jews, Baptists, and Catholics; though free in theory they are severely restricted in every way . Supposedly as a way to deal with AIDS/HIV, Gaston divided much of the nation into Fundamental Christian Territories, of which Angel Land was the first. There, tourists can “See—close up—the Bridge of the Golden Gate, once crossed by motor cars,” and the walls of the ghetto that, in the dim past was known as the Castro, which is Angel Land’s Zone of Perversion. Officially sanctioned violence and murder of gays makes some of the inhabitants of the ghetto believe it might not be such a bad thing after all: if the walls keep them in, they can also keep the brutes out. It doesn’t always work that way.Angel Land has a twisted plot about marginalized people in a disintegrating world run by a rabid demagogue aided by a committee of equally rabid demagogues, a world in which the European Middle Ages seem to reoccurring with a dark helping of Hitler and Stalin at their worst, stirred in. It’s a society where books are banned, knowledge by any but the rulers is illegal, freedoms are virtually unknown except for the few; a society where a form of slavery is perpetuated, particularly upon the young, and gays leave their ghetto at the risk of their lives.The characters in this book are vintage Banis: brave with the courage of the mythic Stonewall drag queens; defiantly smart and smart-ass like the first Harvey Milk; able to sometimes find love in spite of the danger; daring to flip the bird to deprivation and hatred. Our hero is, perhaps, an unlikely one: Harvey Milk Walton, a skinny kid who’s not particularly beautiful (imagine that, in a gay novel!), a slave who has accidentally killed his master and fled for his life. In the ghetto Harvey finds friendship, love, sanctuary, his courage, and a purpose that transcends and transforms his life. There is Dell, the blustering, blunt, and brave lesbian and Sarah, the abused, feral child she adopts. The endlessly quotable “Auntie” Tom, present in spirit if not in flesh. The elderly Manager, a man of age, wisdom, and quiet defiance. Chip, Harvey’s friend. And many more wonderful characters worked in true Banis fashion. Is every gay character brave and admirable? Not at all. Banis would never create such an unrealistic cast. That’s one of the things you can count on with a Banis book: the situations and plots may be unusual; the people are always believable.When Harvey, to his amazement, finds love it is with a tormented soul named Aram; more than that I’m not going to tell you; you’ll have to read it for yourself. The Bad Guys are bad to the bone, some of them, like the jack-booted, taser-armed Lay Workers—the soldiers and police—are overtly bad. Others wouldn’t lift a finger to crush a bug and they mouth scripture and platitudes…but because they created and maintain of the evil they are the worst of all.Books of froth and fun have their place and sometimes even I like them. But as you undoubtedly surmised, Angel Land isn’t a froth-and-fun tale. It’s full of grim, black humor and it’s a book that gets the thought processes whirring, a book that grips you by the gut. It’s a book that would make certain people froth at the mouth from indignation if they dared to read it. My kind of book.Because I find Banis’ language usage so engaging, I can’t end this without quoting a sampling of my favorite lines. The Sept. virus: “A dish, a fork, a spoon, probably a cow jumping over the moon, almost anything could be the instrument of infection, almost anyone the messenger of death.” Legendary things called automobiles: “Of all the jewels of antiquity, none fascinated me more than those, the automobiles, songs of freedom sculpted into metal.” The suppression of other faiths: “One by one the lesser fishies succumbed to the great black shark in the sea of religion.”I know you won’t be surprised when I say Angel Land is highly recommended. It isn’t a bestseller, but it should be! less

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