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Bowl Of Fruit, A Whale In The Woods by Russel Like check out website: www.brunswickgalaxypress.com
One day, he finds a strange pair of glasses in his apartment and attached to them by a piece of string is a small picture of a bridge not far from his apartment building. Curious though as to how they got there, he puts on the glasses and scans the room. Not much happens until he happens to glance at the painting on the wall. A small LED-like red dot appears in the corner of his vision. He moves his head away from the picture and then back again to confirm it's not a fluke. Again, the red light appears when he looks at the picture.
For a few days, he disregards the glasses but later on he starts to experiment
with them. Fisher finds that not only does a red light appear when viewing a certain
painting, he can concentrate on the painting that is identified by the red. He
finds he can use the painting attached to the glasses to return to his own reality. This keeps happening, until he is chased by the man
shouting he want the glasses back. Fisher runs into a gallery and hastily jumps
into a painting. It turns out to be a reality somewhat like Nazi Germany and he
is arrested for having a painting and thrown in a cell. This is advertised
on the back cover as being a humorous book, but personally I can't see it myself.
I think the author was trying to be satirical and trying to get a number of points
across in the process, but I feel the work fails on both counts. There is certainly
no obvious slapstick or comic elements to be found. The characters are, you could
say, slightly eccentric or oddball, but even they provide little or no humour
to the proceedings. There are numerous mentions to 'Star Trek' and
in a way that's what it feels like. A poorly written 'Star Trek' script or one
of its variants. The plot elements feel very derivative of a whole host of sources.
It almost has a feeling of over familiarity to it. The characters are poorly developed
and altogether not really very interesting. As for the story-line, it doesn't
take you long to see where it's going. There are a few elements of
this book I enjoyed, but these were let down by overly long sections of pure character
development and back-story which felt over-worked and were too long. This book
could have been so much better. Even the alternate realities were uninspired.
It could have taken us anywhere but stuck with the monotonous. It also felt as
though the author were trying to get distinct points over about individualism
and the like and it just seemed a bit too contrived for my liking. I think with a bit more idea development and better character building this could have been a really good Science Fiction book. The ending for me just seals its fate. It is wrapped up with such speed that if you blink, you'll miss it. I
don't want to dismiss this novel as it's only Russel Like's second book, but the
work just feels dumbed down. His next book needs more teeth. Phil Jones
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OTHER REVIEWS - October 2004
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Greg
Fisher is just your normal everyday man. He gets up in the morning, goes to his
regular job as an accountant and everything is, well, normal. He has a few friends
from college whom he meets up with now and then, but in reality his life is fairly
hum drum existence.
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