Forbes West

If someone said to me, “Hey, read this amazing book. It’s written in 2nd person POV—” I’d stop them right there. Then I’d say “No thanks. I hate reading 2nd person POV, because it makes my brain melt.” I’m glad I didn’t know what POV “Nighthawks at the Mission” was written in, because my judgy jerk attitude would have caused me to miss out on a truly awesome book.

A short summary: This is a futuristic story in which settlers from the U.S. have come to live in The Oberon (Off-World). It is a land that is accessed by an energy portal in the South Pacific. Once there, the settlers mine orichalcum- a mineral that can give people magical powers.

You are Sarah Orange, and you have settled in The Oberon. And the adventure begins, although the previous chapters introducing you to yourself are extremely entertaining and you should read them.
I forgot about POV after the first page, drawn into the insane (and very cool) world created by the author. The vivid descriptions of people (or not-people) and settings is pretty damn impressive. Sometimes a reader feels she’s stepped into the mind of a nutcase, but not in a bad way. The Oberon is a bleak, and sometimes deadly place that floats somewhere between sci-fi and fantasy.

This book isn’t for folks who don’t like to think while they read. While it seems like just a fun ride on the surface, West creeps inside your brain with each detail and forces you to try to figure out what he’s telling you. I’m not sure I have, so I’m going to read it again.
… (altro)

Okay Hunter S. Thompson. Keep up with me.

An Adderall and alcohol fueled, dangerous dream of a novel, in a nightmarish paean to Waits and Kerouac, Burgess and Kubrick, Forbes paints a LSD fueled journey down the rabbit-hole with his stunning brilliance of imagery, drowning in surreal pageantry. He drags you, literally, into a different world, a world of multi-coloured dragons and breathtaking vistas, where nothing is ever what it seems. Or is it?

Forbes’ prose is brilliant, a searchlight reaching across a blasted land. Sandpaper sliding across exposed nerve endings, the frisson of dread before the beast of the night explodes from on high. The smell of carrion upon the night wind, sliding across the senses. As Michael Bunker puts it, (http://alturl.com/v78g3) Nighthawks at the Mission is "an epic, fantasy, sci-fi, tour-de-force." I don’t know whether to hug Michael or hit him – his review of Nighthawks is everything I wished to say about the novel. Drat him, anyway, for stealing my thunder! (Yes, I now have a crush on him for reaching into my soul . . .)

Visualize, please, a world of seven moons. A world of light and storms, of death and life carried out on an unimaginable scale. A world where nothing, and everything is, and is not, what it seems. Nighthawks reads like the bastard offspring of A Clockwork Orange and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – "two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers.... A quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls." All consumed on the deck of the Queen Mary as she sails towards a new and shocking world of dreams and illusion.

Not everyone is going to love this book as I do. It is a twisted and bacchanalian view into a quirky, funky and totally surreal mind, a mind not everyone will enjoy or appreciate. Pity. If you require all the little bunny-rabbits to have lovely, silky brown fur, don’t bother. These bunnies have brilliantly coloured fur, warping and twisting through serpentine mirrors, razor-sharp teeth reaching out through blood-stained maws. They are shockingly alive, reaching into your mind to dazzle and tease, leaving you breathless and dazed, deep beneath the sea of darkness within your own mind.

And the tail-lights dissolve, in the coming of night, and the questions in thousands take flight…

Very, very highly recommended – buy the ticket, and take the ride, a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue Label and a vat of colourful pills by your side . . .
… (altro)