Reading: Unbound Boxes Limping Gods: The Floating Asylum

Unbound Boxes

  Limping Gods:

The Floating Asylum


By Cheryl Moore

Time Line: 3995, somewhere in The Pacific Ocean

Best to click over to Cheryl's blog for easy reading...but come back for discussion!

Juba Apfvarzian was a good magician. He woke up in an asylum ship, after performing a particularly skilful illusion. Magic can apparently get you into a lot of trouble, in an increasingly intolerant world. Alexand Merek has survived for three years inside the asylum, outliving everyone. She doesn’t know how she has survived, she just wants to be somewhere far away.
~

My Thoughts:

Whew! This imagined future for the world is very scary! It reminded me of the old days of fighting/killing for spectators...it seems, at least for this author, the future is just as grim...

Still, Alexand has lived where most others have died...are the experiments different for the various prisoners or is she such an exceptional individual--a survivor...

My imagined world in 3995 would be an ocean free from any
contaminations and lovers walking along the beach...Others
watching smile and remember young love...
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pacific_Shore.JPG

The stacked cages remind me on animal cages used for poultry and other animals...does this indicate that it is now people who are the recipients instead of animals...Moore opens the reader's imagination into the exploration of a "possible" future... I recognize that I could not imagine having to live there...

A story such as this forces me to read on...I want to learn more...I am sure Alexand will survive, but will she have changed by this experience?

Question for Cheryl:

I note that in your character descriptions you use "partner" as opposed to spouse...Is that merely a consistency factor to allow for sexual orientation...or...does your future have "marriage" and "spouses"?

Review: POWERFUL! BRILLIANT! A MUST-READ!

Image via Wikipedia

Jerusalem Spring




By Fares Aoun


...Powerful!

...Brilliant!

...A Must-Read!



I love when writers decide to use fiction to tell an opinion or express concern about some situation. Fares Aoun has created a powerful, brilliantly conceived method and story to do just that. I applaud this work and consider it a must-read, especially given I read the book from front to back in one sitting. The impact for me was dramatic; I hope the impact for some will be enlightening...

It is the 1960s and somewhere in the south, readers find themselves inside a segregated prison. A new group is coming in and we see how the all-white guards treat the new prisoners. There are two who are highlighted; one is very young and has been hurt somewhere and is in bad shape. Another who was on the bus is helping him. The identity of these individuals is "13," and "12," the latter.
Immediately trouble begins because 12 was trying to get somebody to help 13. There would be no doctor tonight, but the warden, at least, ordered that 13 be given food that night. He never received any from the guards. After the mandatory shower, etc., the guards literally pushed them forward into a room at which other prisoners stood at the bars and quickly closed the door. They were in a large, long hallway; the prison was extremely overcrowded and though the warden kept insisting that no further men be sent there, nothing changed.

Needing to know his present situation, 12 immediately started to look and walk around and when no food came, he tried to find somebody to help 13.

Finally, he came upon one man in a cell--all the doors were kept open so the crowded group could at least move around, but the toilets were broken and the smell horrendous.
Joe was alone in his cell with stacks and stacks of books. Everybody knew that he was this warden's inside man, but at least he got one slice of bread for 13.
The warden and his wife were both individuals who did not discriminate nor feel differently about those of other races. His wife wanted to leave the south and go somewhere else and start a family because of the tense racial situation. Unknown to his wife, the warden had already started the transfer process months ago; but he didn't want to raise her hopes. The warden was a good man most of the time; he hated what he sometimes had to become in order to do his job. But when a fire, and then a kitchen riot erupted, he became who he felt he had to be to do his job. And then hated his actions because they were similar to his father's...

Even Joe was surprised at how the warden was treating those who had been caught in the riot, even if they personally hadn't been the instigators. For Joe and the warden had become at least cordial and the warden got Joe his books and was even discussing his taking college courses...

Readers may stumble just as Part II begins in present time but will quickly continue on.

Because, actually, the same story continues! Yes, there are a few slight changes--Joe is now called Yusef. The prison becomes a "camp" of people. Scott is still waiting to transfer...

From the author (p. 223, Acknowledgments) "My mom raised us to treat others the way we would want to be treated. My Dad taught us to tell the truth and stand up for the weak." From the Dedication--...this book [is dedicated] to my children and to every child throughout the world with the hope that we adults will give them a better place to live.

I pray with that hope too... If you also have hope...read this book and share it. I'm also hoping the author's next book runs along similar lines! Can there ever be a happy ending? I have a feeling this author has much to say to the world...and I want to read it!

Book Received Via
Blogger LinkUp

G. A. Bixler



Related articles

• Warden in Pa. prison inmate beating case resigns (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Report finds Haiti officers killed at least 12 detainees 'without justification' during Jan. 19 prison uprising - NYT (nytimes.com)
• Warden wants high-risk inmates moved to prevent jailbreaks (newsinfo.inquirer.net)
• Jail Break In Mexico 141 Prisoners Escape | Warden May Be Involved [Video] (realestateradiousa.com)
• Political Prisoner Denied Eighth Amendment Rights [Dispatches from the Culture Wars] (scienceblogs.com)
• Kenneth Hartman: 8 Accurate Books To Read About Life In Prison (PHOTOS) (huffingtonpost.com)

Review: Novel Takes Readers Into Dramatic Life of Psychiatric Hospital Patients!

Don’t Look Down
By David Laing Dawson
Bridgeross Communications
ISBN: 9780981003757
174 Pages


Don’t Look Down by David Laing Dawson is different...I don’t think it is a true story, but it is certainly fiction based upon the reality faced by the author as a clinical psychiatrist. At a minimum, I found it to be an indictment of the prison system and, perhaps, even the hospitals, as individuals who commit violent crimes are shuffled back and forth between the two institutions. Whether or not this was intended, it came through for me!

Consider Frank who has just served a ten-year sentence in prison for manslaughter. When his prison term is up, instead of being free, he is sent to a psychiatric hospital and placed in a room where there are three other men. As one of the men questions, why should these men feel safe living in such small quarters with someone who has murdered someone.

Henry was my favorite character. Most of the time he was clear in his head and probably would have been more often if he was not housed in the facility where his lawyer and doctors were trying to determine if he was able to stand trial. He had murdered his long-time companion. At her request. Oh, she didn’t specifically say that he should buy a gun and shoot her in the temple, but she had begged him to not have her lie and suffer until her death, like his first wife had done. Henry did the best he could to honor his wife’s dying request.

Joseph was delusional about his wife—claiming that she was always having affairs and becoming severely depressed because of those delusions. David was schizophrenic and had been accused of killing Sally, a street woman with whom he had started to live, but David’s response was only that he had killed the thing that Sally had become...

“...it occurred to Henry that perhaps he was already dead. This could be it, he thought, a Spartan waiting room in Limbo, his keepers trading messages about him, deciding to pass him on or not.” (p. 109)

Daily life, the hours spent sitting in silence, waiting for medication or a meal, watching others, watching you continued. Until Frank attacked Joseph one night...

Don’t Look Down is not an easy book to read. Perhaps it will seem too real to you, but, then, perhaps you need to read it for one reason or another. Certainly professionals and students of psychiatry would find it a must-read. Certainly anybody who has friends or family in psychiatric hospitals should...

What any reader will find in the book, though, is that these men are just people, just like us, if our circumstances had been different, or were changed in the future... Excellent writing style for describing the personalities of these characters; you will come to care for each of them, even Frank. David Laing Dawson lays the truth on the line; will you be one that picks it up?

G. A. Bixler