Thursday, October 13, 2022

Review: End Man by Alex Austin


 Genre: Science Fiction

Author

Alex Austin is a Los Angeles-based journalist, novelist, and playwright. He cites numerous awards for his work.

Description:

Protagonist Raphael Lennon’s pursuit of a mystery “unearths the secrets of his own phobia-plagued life and the inner workings of Norval, whose corporate ambitions include a nightmarish spin-off of its product. Raphael must stop them or he’ll never be free.”

Appraisal:

End Man initially reads as a futuristic allegory. The story’s antihero, Raphael, is given the name of an archangel in Jewish literature. Raphael’s job is to track down individuals, “possums,” who have gone off the digital grid by faking their deaths. The company he works for sells data of the dead and is highly profitable. The reason for locating possums involves a post-life enterprise. Raphael has dromophobia, a fear of crossing streets, which confines his life to an area one mile square.

All of which is fare for introspection into the human condition: Is the economic worth of an individual today more or less than the value of data corporations gather and sell; does an Internet presence create an historical afterlife for run-of-the-mill folks; can we break free of the boundaries we place on ourselves?

Raphael is told a prophecy that he will die in 13 days. Rather than give up, he is driven by curiosity and a moral gyroscope to continue searching for a particular possum, even after his company ordered him to stop. His search reveals more about himself than the truth of whether the possum is alive or dead. Does a search for truth give life meaning?

Or do I read too much into Mr. Austin’s work?

It’s hard to imagine that quality of writing happened by accident, but not impossible. The novel concludes with a disappointing comic-bookesque deus ex machina. Next comes a cute epilog that has an utterly vapid final line.

One wonders what the author intended.

Buy now from:            Amazon US        Amazon UK

FYI:

Some language not suitable for young readers

Format/Typo Issues:

None

Rating: ***** Five stars

Reviewed by: Sam Waite

Approximate word count: 90-95,000 words

2 comments:

Alex Austin said...

I liked your thoughtful review. However, whatever I intended with the novel, the last sentence is intended to be ironic. The horror of awakening to a world in which everyone loved is gone, is not better than death. Alex Austin

Sam Waite said...

I'm glad you sent a message. I reread the epilog, and I still would not have gotten the ironic intent without your guidance. "I know no one in this time, but still life is better than death, well yes," was my take. Perhaps if the novel had had a somewhat ominous or at least tenuously happy ending, the irony would have been easier to grasp.

I am a retired journalist, last job was stocks editor at Bloomberg's Tokyo Bureau. I've had one novel and two short stories published by Virgin Books. Three novels put up and taken down by ebook houses for lack of sales. I recently tried self-publishing with The Maryjane Gambit, and I will not do so again. I will put the review on Amazon without the epilog reference.