The survivor of a ship wreck his post trauma life and times haunted by an awareness of an otherworldly presence, one that possibly saved him and sustained him through the hopeless days when his life hung by a thread. A being that may have compelled him to perform an unthinkable act in order to do so. Consider what you might not do in order to prolong your time as you wait hoping for rescue, when you float surrounded by the bodies of the dead.
A shape shifting being adrift in time and space trying to survive in a world it was not created to exist upon. Manifested but hiding in plain sight, an awkward mimick that masks something other than human, a condition all too human off course.
Jane Rawson draws such sorrow from this situation, the pain of existence post trauma. Insightful and continually surprising as she draws a disparate group of characters together and into situations that at times stretch credulity to a Maupinean degree, rendering it entirely plausible in this confusing and bewildering world we share. It is an interesting conceit to establish that an elder being from beyond the stars has any more control over their destiny than any of the rest of us.
The game of life plays out in this outre text, each character receiving unfair degrees of success and failure as they attempt to survivetheir own lives and times. The ups and downs mirror images to each others experiences.
Until the reader comes to see that the truth of being a human being is to acknowledge that it is our lot in life to marvel at what a lot of life there is.
Genuinely moving.
And that is from someone who did not weep as Tony Stark heroically passed.
