Book Review: A Shattered Memory, by Alan Halsey

            So over the past few weeks, I’ve given out quite a few stars to quite a few deserving authors. Urban fantasy, pulp sci-fi, romance . . . I think I’ve discovered quite a few good new voices. So this week I turned to a thriller, a genre which I love (see here). A Shattered Memory, by Alan Halsey, continues one recent trend: it was written by a man. Unfortunately, it hasn’t continued the recent trend in star count. I’ve got to be honest here. A Shattered Memory contains a few good ideas, but is riddled with unoriginal protagonists, confusing plot twists, and the most original story arc has very little effect on the story at all.

It has a very nice cover, though the styling makes it look like YA realistic fiction.

            After a confusing first chapter that could have been cut without having any impact on the overall story, we meet our ‘heroine’, Carolyn Crest. Right off the bat we learn two important things about her—she’s a virgin, and she’s a college student. The daughter of a fairly well-off Kentucky family, Carolyn’s never faced any threat to her privileged life—and when she does encounter said threat, she reacts by crying and cuddling with her father. She’s the typical damsel in distress who falls in love with the first single man she runs into in the narrative. As covert operation teams plan secret attacks, she offers to make coffee. Her closest stab at heroism is when she offers her precious virginity to an insane rapist so he won’t rape her friend—but I found it hard to sympathize with a woman who’s virginity is her most precious possession.

            The other main character in this story, Michael, wakes up one day with no memory of his past. He lives in a mysterious world where his surroundings constantly shift and his job is sorting and retrieving memories. But when a mysterious package falls into his hands containing memories of the future, Michael embarks on a journey to discover the secrets behind his strange world. This part of the story brims with creativity, even if the characterization of Michael’s sidekick Jeremy is a little weak. The dream realm Michael inhabits is vivid and cool. Unfortunately, Michael’s quest cumulates in a single anti-climatic moment in the book’s ending, undermining all the investment readers had made in the characters there.

            Warning: the rest of this post contains spoilers. Read at your own risk.

           

            The plot of this book revolves around a mysterious fortress in the Kentucky hills known as Shadow Gate, a military testing facility. Innocent people, including Carolyn’s best friend Sam and mother Rebecca, have been kidnapped and tortured for weeks in this really bad place. Why the military does this is never actually explained. Shadow Gate is controlled by a man known as the General, who becomes sexually aroused by watching people get tortured—an effect I think was designed to make the readers hate and fear him, but which just made me feel kind of icky.   

            A crack team of commandos assembles to rescue the hostages. Carolyn dutifully falls in love with the squad’s leader and is then quickly abducted. She is nearly raped a few times. Her friend Sam has already been raped for weeks, but as she’s not a virgin, she’s not nearly as broken down about it as she would have otherwise been. They’re taken back to Shadow Gate. The commandos break in to rescue them, but, surprise, one of the commandos actually works for the bad guys.

            All the main characters are dragged into one big room, where the mysterious villains give a monologue revealing three of the main characters are secretly related to each other and that another one of the good guys has been working on their side. These major revelations have no lasting effect on the characters at all, because incest is okay and, hey, betraying your family to the bad guys is fine if you feel really bad about it. There’s also a bit about chemical mind control weapons.

            It’s then that Michael—who has learned by now he’s a figment in the imagination of a minor character’s mind—has his moment of glory. He inspires said minor character to get to his feet and tackle a bad guy, leaving room for the heroic commando leader to grab a gun and shoot all the bad guys dead. He then rescues Carolyn, who decides to drop out of college and marry him. Judging by what we’ve seen of her life skills by now, this is probably for the best.

             The climax feels like hundreds of pages worth of plot developments have been crammed into a few short paragraphs and delivered as dialogue. None of this stuff has been foreshadowed at all. As a reader, I can’t think back and realize, ‘oh, that makes perfect sense because of X, Y, and Z’.

            Big revelations should have big consequences. Two people in a romantic relationship discovering they are relatives shouldn’t happen at the very end of the book, but in the middle, where they can struggle with the choice between their love and society’s standards. And someone who betrays his family just getting forgiven without consequences doesn’t feel real. These are two examples of things that could have given the characters more depth had they been revealed earlier in the book—not to mention, it would have left room for a climax that did more than reveal pointless secrets.

            I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings here, and I’d be devastated if someone said this about my work—but this isn’t a soft business. Truth is, A Shattered Memory has potential to be a decent story, but right now I feel like I’m reading someone’s first novel. The author needs to learn a few lessons about characterization and plot development. I’d recommend he read The Fire in Fiction by Donald Maass, and re-write this one from scratch. Writing a novel is hard enough without pressuring yourself to write a good one, but it’s worth the effort.

            High Points: Michael’s world. Original, and the use of ‘primary documents’ from his world really was a nice creative touch.

Low Points: The characterization of women. I’m not the kind of militant feminist who demands every female character should be capable of kicking ass, but Carolyn feels like a ridiculous caricature of a ‘good Christian girl’—demure, passive, and seeking only a husband so she can settle down and pop out babies. Sure, I know girls like that, but they draw a great deal of personal strength from their convictions, whereas Carolyn has the personal strength of a ragdoll. The climax. Villains appear without foreshadowing, introduce a never-before heard of plot point about chemical weapons, and deliver exactly one evil monologue before being killed by the hero. One villain actually says, “Let’s do a quick wrap up,” before proceeding to string a bunch of plot points together.    

Did I like this book? No. Would I read it again? No. Would I recommend it to people who like thrillers? No. My rating? As a thriller, I’ll give it two and a half stars out of five. As a novel? Two.

--Liz Ellor, O43

You can download A Shattered Memory here