Halcyon by Rio Youers

Published by St. Martin's Press on July 10, 2018

Martin and Laura Lovegrove have two daughters, Shirley (15) and Edith (10). Edith used to suffer from night terrors, but a therapist helped her put that in her past. Until now, when she has a vision — a premonition — that she somehow projects to her sister, of an explosion that kills hundreds of people. Three days later, a young man who has apparently been brainwashed drives a homemade bomb into a nightclub, causing the scene that Edith saw. A woman who suffers from the same affliction, psychic signals crossing over into the realm of perception, teaches Edith to cope.

Martin is recruited to join Halcyon, which Nolan, the recruiter, defines as a better and safer America, a self-sustaining community with no crime, no poverty, no discrimination, no tech, and no clocks. Its founder, Mother Moon, is its spiritual leader, but Nolan denies that the community is a religious group, a cult, or a hippy commune (although it sounds like a combination of all those). Halcyon is on an island and, for reasons I won’t reveal, what happens in Halcyon stays in Halcyon. It’s like Hotel California: you can check out, but you can never leave. Except for Mother Moon, who apparently spends some of her time at a mysterious place called Glam Moon, which may or may not be an imaginary world.

Mother Moon is Valerie Kemp, who sold her body for drugs in Manhattan until she found the Society of Pain. The Society teaches that pain is the path to enlightenment, although its members prefer to witness the pain of others than to experience their own.

Eventually this all ties together but I cannot say that the connections are seamless. The novel feels like it was compiled from three related stories, each of which are more interesting than the story they create when assembled. That’s partly because it just takes too long for Halcyon to get where it’s going. Halcyon’s The novel’s pace too often lags. Perhaps a less ambitious story would have been tighter and more compelling.

Halcyon benefits from moments of strong writing, particularly when Edith discovers that she can’t suppress or hide from a nightmare premonition. The story has supernatural elements, or at least psychic themes and the suggestion of a hellacious afterlife, but it isn’t sufficiently frightening to be classified as a horror novel. It’s just a little too strange to be scary, unless readers are frightened by malicious roosters.

Nor is Halcyon sufficiently thrilling to be classified as a thriller, although it does feature elements of crime and mystery. The story addresses terrorism in an abstract way that divorces terrorism from its political roots, which divorces the story from the realm of terrorism-based thrillers. I’m not so anal that I need to classify every novel — some of my favorite books defy classification — but it is difficult to know just what to make of Halcyon.

Notwithstanding its faults, Halcyon introduces the reader to sympathetic characters and occasionally builds tension by placing those characters at risk. School shootings and other acts of mass violence are an early theme of Halcyon, but they are not sensationalized. The story is not pro-gun or anti-gun; it is pro-empathy for families touched by violence. While Halcyon might be predominantly a horror story, the novel recognizes that there is plenty of horror in the earthbound world, and that horror must be balanced with compassion. The story struggles to follow a consistent theme as it moves from cults to sadists to mass killings to domestic drama to interdimensional portals, but it has something worthwhile to say about how victims can become monsters. That earns Halcyon a guarded recommendation.

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Westlake Soul by Rio Youers

Published by ChiZine Publications on April 10, 2012

After a surfing accident, Westlake Soul woke up with "the most powerful mind on the planet, but a body like a wet paper bag." According to his doctor, Wes is in a persistent vegetative state. Wes' parents take him home, resisting his doctor's suggestion that it might be better to let him die. Yet Wes is cognizant, aware of his surroundings; he just can't express his awareness or interact with those around him. At least he can't interact in a conventional sense. West has some new abilities: astral projection, telepathic communication with animals, fluency in all languages, but not the ability to communicate with or control humans (although he can read their thoughts, something he rarely does). He can watch Angelina Jolie take a shower, he can hover in the background while Bruce Springsteen and Elvis Costello jam at a party, but he can't tell anyone that his brain is still alive. He struggles frequently with death, in the form of Dr. Quietus, while his parents cope with the pain of living with an apparently brain-dead child. You know where this is going, right?

Wes is convinced that he will eventually overcome his disabling condition, that he will speak and surf again, while the reader suspects that Wes is unable to accept his fate, to process the knowledge that his consciousness will always be trapped inside a dysfunctional shell. When things get tough for Wes, he projects himself to a calmer place: a rainforest, a waterfall, the moon. Of course, the reader wonders whether this is a defense mechanism, blissful imagination replacing horrid reality.

There are moments when Westlake Soul strives to be literary but most of the time the prose is active and edgy, conveying the story's emotion rather than the beauty of language. Emotions pervade the story. Love is at its center, but sorrow and loss and anger and fear provide the context. Wes remembers the love of a girlfriend who, understandably, is now gone from his life. He experiences a new love for his second caregiver. He loves his family and, of course, the dog whose mind he can now read. These people (and the dog) love Wes in return, making the decision they must reach all the more difficult. It is a testament to Rio Youers' skill that the emotions he evokes are sometimes so powerful that story becomes difficult to read.

Although the novel is driven by love, it's more fundamentally about life and death, with life at the forefront. Learning to live, according to Wes, means learning to conquer fear. As I was reading Westlake Soul, I had some concern that it would turn into a polemic, fuel for the wrongheaded politicians who condemned Terri Schiavo's husband for discontinuing her life support, who thought they knew more about her cognitive ability than her doctors did. That concern was unwarranted. The novel doesn't advocate for the religious right. Quite the opposite, given Wes' nonjudgmental nature and his realization that as important as it is to fight for life, it is equally important not to fear death.

There are times when Westlake Soul dances on the edge of melodrama. There are times when Wes is so unselfish and forgiving as to strain credulity -- at least until he does something, late in the novel, that reveals a minor but all-too-human flaw. Despite its faults, Westlake Soul did what good literature should do: it moved me. From the beginning to the end, Westlake Soul touched me emotionally in a way that cheesy melodrama never does. I tip my hat to Youers for writing such a powerful and convincing story.

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