Let me begin by saying that I really liked Robert J Sawyer's fiction, so when I discuss this book I hope it doesn't put you off trying some of his other works. Some of them were excellent and most of them were, at the very least, enjoyable quick reads. Triggers, however, was disappointing.
World-Building: Decent, though unoriginal until the end
Characterizations: A little wooden and 2D, but decent
Plot: Shows promise, but devolves near the end
Unlike the others Rober J Sawyer works I've read this one is set in the US. Also unlike his other work it isn't really science fiction, despite what the label on my copy from the library says. It's political fiction with a badly explained scientific premise that ends up being messed up and never explored to its potential.
It started out fine and despite the tired old terror plot concept I decided to stuck with it, because after all, it was written by a good author and he's Canadian, not American, so I expected a slightly different view on the whole terrorism thing to eventually emerge. Something original, perhaps.
The novel starts off with a medical experiment to rid one US war veteran suffering from PTSD of his horrifying memories. The president is shot on the same day that this war vet is set to have this procedure done and the Secret Service agent in charge rushes the president to the nearest hospital. This happens to be the same hospital in which the procedure is being done. At the same time some other secret service agents find a bomb and, unable to disarm it, it ends up blowing up and causing an electromagnetic pulse. The power outage that results from the electromagnetic pulse somehow messes with the procedure being done on the PTSD soldier and suddenly a bunch of people's memories are entangled, including the president's.
This is a problem because if someone in that hospital knows the secret/confidential plans the president knows them it could pose a national security risk. So the secret service agent in charge ends up having to deal with a bunch of people with entangled memories. So far, this isn't bad. The premise is certainly intriguing. If someone can access another person's memories what will this do to their own decisions, actions, and feelings? I really don't think it was even necessary to have the president or the US setting or the whole war on terrorism stuff going on in the story to make this interesting. The memory-reading concept is interesting enough in itself to work with more everyday characters and it has promise to explore some very important human issues. With the US president thrown in the mix, especially when he's about to authorize an army procedure called "counterpunch" which is so clearly going to have devastating effects for the whole world, the stakes are raised.
And then the author - amazingly - manages to sidestep saying anything of any meaning about terrorism or the idea of war or human nature or science or human memory. The book is really one huge, wasted opportunity in my view. There were so many moments with great potential to explore this whole memory reading concept in depth and to great effect, but the author just completely ignored them and, as Jack Sparrow would describe it, he waved at those moments as they passed him by.
Most of the issues people had with this book have been focused on the failed/stupid ending. Personally, I think the problems started way before the ending when the book focused on the minute details of the thoughts of Susan Dawson, the secret service agent in charge, and the sexual awkwardness/issues arising from this memory-reading rather than focusing on the interesting issues like the black agent being able to read the mind of the racist old white lady or the PTSD soldier who was being read by, and could influence, the president and so on.
But let's ignore all this wasted potential and move on to the ending. The only thing I can say without spoilers is that the ending was shockingly pessimistic in its view of humanity and that it showed a huge lack of understanding of what makes civilizations last, what holds them up and makes them awesome. Quite frankly, I was surprised to see that the author seemed to be arguing against free will and individuality!
Before I start the spoilery section of this review allow me to recommend that you pass this book by and move on to reading some of Sawyer's other, better work. Other reviewers on amazon and other places have rightly said that the ending ruined the book and that it seems the story was not very well thought out by the author. Don't read this book, you won't miss anything.
...
SPOILERS AHEAD.
You have been warned. Proceed at your own risk.
And trust me when I tell you, if you're still reading this book and you intend to continue these spoilers will not make you happy.
...
Ok, so I talked about the missed opportunities earlier in this review and here are some of them in more detail:
1) Kadeem being able to influence the president. I love that he tried. In fact Kadeem seemed one of the only 3D characters in this novel. He had problems and he was a little funny, and he said some rude or not too polite things to the woman he was reading and he wasn't afraid to take advantage of his situation if he could. In other words, he was a real human. So he tried to influence the president and make him realize that the war was terrible, make him see the horrific effects of it first hand, so to speak. That scene when he triggered the PTSD flashback was brilliant. Also brilliant was the president's response and his decision to go ahead with his horrific counter-punch plan BECAUSE of Kadeem's memory. Not the effect the soldier was intending, and a great way to show that even with this seemingly perfect method of communication human beings will persist in their own views and in seeing things their own way. Unfortunately this was not explored or used further and came to nothing in the end.
2) The basketball/confabulation phenomenon. Again, I think this was a stroke of brilliance. This was another genuis idea, in my opinion. The white president while reading the memory of a black man playing basketball with his black friends imagined them as being white. Why? Because Kadeem didn't remember them as being alien or other or different, they were just like him, so he didn't store, in his memory, the detail that they were black. Then the president read this memory and assumed/confabulated a skin color for them and it was white, not black! Genius and should really have been further explored.
3) Ivan Tarasov reading the mind of the girl who doesn't remember being molested. It was great. It showed how negative the effect of reading someone's memories could be for the character's own life and it showed him dealing with it and trying to figure out what to do. That it ended in a shootout that cleanly swept the problem character away is just stupid.
4) The doctor who could read his boss's mind and knew he had cheated/been part of a scam. Again, nothing came of it except a physical confrontation and it was quietly forgotten/swept under the rug. Very stupidly handled.
5) Erik Redekop's attempt to save Jan from her abusive husband. Again, this shows the effect of the memories and shows a character actually dealing with it and trying to do good with it. But how does this end up? He takes her to his apartment instead of the shelter and then they end up having sex because that's just what the woman needed after her abusive relationship, right? It was portrayed in such a creepy way, too, as if she was rewarding him for having saved her or something. And the woman who could read his mind, Nikki, comes in and the only thing she can talk about is how they should get together and have sex and how much he loves her and thinks she's awesome, etc. If ever there was a subplot to headdesk over repeatedly it was this one.
6) The whole terror/counterpunch subplot thing. If the war on terrorism idea thing was brought up for a reason and not just to "raise the stakes" and distract readers from the fact that nothing else interesting was happening then it should have been properly explored, at least. Robert J Sawyer should have had something to say about it, surely, other than the non-solution he came up with for the ending.
7) Singh's different moral compass and the way in which he reacted to Susan's rather aggressive thoughts. Sawyer presents this viewpoint and then fails to follow through on it, making the character feel 2D when he just simply forgets his moral qualms and lets Susan do what she wants without objection.
Finally, I need to say something about the ending. Basically, instead of exploring or trying to present a real solution to the problem the world is facing the author turns all of humanity into one hive-mind. It's as if he's saying that the only way for humanity to solve its problems is for everyone to become exactly the same, lose their individuality and free will, and become part of this huge collective consciousness. Seriously?
He failed to say anything interesting about humanity in this book because he got rid of humanity. He threw out the problems and all the plot threads he had been covering earlier in the book and neatly sidestepped saying anything interesting about any of the issues he raised by basically saying that only solution to humanity's violence is to get rid of humanity altogether.
Also, how he made the connection between humans suddenly becoming one consciousness and them suddenly "realizing" that there is no heaven or afterlife is beyond me. It doesn't follow logic nor does it have anything to do with the story. It was just an inserted plug for atheism that didn't fit.
Speaking of plugs, does this man not realize that the blackberry is the most dysfunctional and unreliable type of phone in existence?
Well, that's all I'll bore you with on this subject. Please leave a comment and let me know what you thought of Triggers!
No comments:
Post a Comment