The Department of Spirit Research | ||||||
James Patrick Cobb | ||||||
Double Dragon Publishing, 216 pages | ||||||
A review by Nathan Brazil
The premise is that a type of computer, called Medium II, allows its operators to literally speak with the
dead. The Department of Spirit Research itself is where the action begins, as a young woman named Riley
accepts the offer of a job as an operator. On her first day she encounters her dead father, and
another mischievous spirit that likes to watch her in the toilet. Advice on how to cope with them, and what to look
for among the millions of departed souls, comes from co-worker Addison. Operators are paid by the number
of useful contacts they make.
A useful contact is loosely defined as a spirit that has information of interest to the foundations. The
foundations, (no capitalisation), are not a popular beat combo of the 60s, but rather the movers and
shakers of modern America. This, however, is a vastly less influential America, diminished through lack of
investment, needless foreign wars and indifference to the wider world. The exact nature of this fall is
never explained. All we know is that the foundations dream of information -- deep secrets -- that may bring
back the glory days.
What they get are fourteen classifications of departed souls, and a project called Spirit Host, the aim of
which is to create clones with artificial ageing and memory implants, to house the willing souls of those in
the afterlife who wish to return. Added to the mix are a tedious, less than convincing love match between
Riley and Addison, movies starring all-digital casts, and a returned top director who leaves his new body
to wander, only to find it hijacked by a psychopathic criminal! Oh, and there's an African dictatorship
whose president for life buys a top of the range Spirit Host, intending to live forever within it, only
to find he is incapable of assuming control, and is supplanted by a lieutenant he had previously murdered.
Confused, you will be. Even Yoda's mind would be boggled. When one of the main protagonists dies, believing
it is wrong to bring people back, the surviving partner has a change of mind. It is at this point that
James Patrick Cobb drops into religious mumbo-jumbo and treats us to lines such as "God does what he does for a reason."
I had high hopes for this book, but found it to be an amateurish mish-mash of poorly planned and
partially executed ideas, all of which lacked focus and clarity. The concept of Medium II, and bringing back
departed souls into artificial bodies remains intriguing. But on the evidence of this novel, the author has
long way to go before he can deliver the depth, sensitivity and maturity that the subject demands.
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