Official Review: Laikanist Times by Dylan Malik Orchard
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- Latest Review: "Laikanist Times" by Dylan Malik Orchard
Official Review: Laikanist Times by Dylan Malik Orchard
[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Laikanist Times" by Dylan Malik Orchard.]
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“Eddy the Sloth plucked another leaf from the tree he’d spent the last three days hanging from and slowly but purposefully started chewing it. This wasn’t the best tree he’d ever hung around in, nor was it the worst. Although if it didn’t hold one particular attraction he’d long ago have started the slow process of moving on to leafier pastures. But it did have at least one thing to hold his interest and Eddy had a lot of time for things which could hold his interest.”
This was the first paragraph of the first story, coming from Dylan Malik Orchard’s book, LAIKANIST TIMES, what appears to be either a novel-in-stories, or just a regular book of short stories, where the stories just happen to connect together.
I will attempt to go forward with my review of the entirety of the book in a few more paragraphs, but for now allow me to carry on about this first vignette, entitled “Eddy the Sloth.”
I didn’t care for this. I tried to have an open mind, but I still didn’t care for it. The writer
uses a lot of verbiage redundantly describing Eddy giving his time to things holding his interest—the opening paragraph does nothing much to pull me into the book. Right there, I have an issue.
Ultimately, this first half-page vignette describes the sloth contemplating its place in what appears to be its cage in a zoo of some sort (which, when compared to the next story in sequence, really doesn’t make much sense). A lot of verbiage is spilled talking about Eddy being a deep thinker, and things holding his interest—just so in the end he can decide that this is just how things are. Makes me wonder, what is the point?
OK, so now for reviewing the entirety of the book.
Right from the get-go I didn’t care for this short book (only 70 pages in a PDF file), and yet I wanted to. Believe me, I really wanted to.
But with the next story, entitled “Chimps, we move on to a post-apocalyptic London, where some apparently highly evolved chimps hide out in some underground bunker, and look upon some ghosts with a skeptic’s amusement and sometime annoyance. they go around pontificating about their role in the world in this landscape, and they continue to pontificate and talk about their scientists and their minds, and this and that and the other, and I just got completely lost by the end of this particular story.
It all made so much nonsense to me. But I’ll get into the nonsense in a moment, OK?
The whole book switches from interconnected story to interconnected story, going from chimps to sloths to dogs, basically rekindling a PLANET OF THE APES sort of dystopian future, where humans are no longer the dominant species and animals have jumped far ahead in the evolutionary road. Though honestly I couldn’t quite follow the jive.
Really, I tried to follow the story, right to the ending vignette, trying to figure out the point of this apparent evolving-towards-some-biblical-eternal-life-while-the-doomsday-machine-preps-to-kill-everybody-else sort of story, but I really just could not understand. I think it was the author’s decision to go from one group of characters to the next, and make a story cycle much like the science fictional equivalent to Faulkner’s GO DOWN, MOSES, just complicates and even obliterates whatever point the author was trying to make. It’s like he took the PLANET OF THE APES motif and put it into a Gertrude Stein, nonsense literature blender and mixed it all up. Which on one level makes me almost respect the guy for certain literary aspirations. But in the end it just leaves me confused.
Beyond the heavy redundancies in the first vignette of the book, I actually felt that the author provided some rather interesting nuance within this book in terms of his phraseology. “She spent a good ten minutes staring blankly out of the window, her breathing slowing as the vista of emptiness before her sank in.” As an aspiring writer myself, I look for poetic phrases like this; so kudos to Mister Orchard for achieving such touches of nuance.
But considering the rough beginning, and the fact that beyond a small comprehension throughout that still left me confused overall, is that really enough?
I give this book 2 out of 4. You show some promise with this one, Mister Orchard, but I will have to see more from you to see how that promise will play out.
***
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This was the first paragraph of the first story, coming from Dylan Malik Orchard’s book, LAIKANIST TIMES, what appears to be either a novel-in-stories, or just a regular book of short stories, where the stories just happen to connect together.
I will attempt to go forward with my review of the entirety of the book in a few more paragraphs, but for now allow me to carry on about this first vignette, entitled “Eddy the Sloth.”
I didn’t care for this. I tried to have an open mind, but I still didn’t care for it. The writer
uses a lot of verbiage redundantly describing Eddy giving his time to things holding his interest—the opening paragraph does nothing much to pull me into the book. Right there, I have an issue.
Ultimately, this first half-page vignette describes the sloth contemplating its place in what appears to be its cage in a zoo of some sort (which, when compared to the next story in sequence, really doesn’t make much sense). A lot of verbiage is spilled talking about Eddy being a deep thinker, and things holding his interest—just so in the end he can decide that this is just how things are. Makes me wonder, what is the point?
OK, so now for reviewing the entirety of the book.
Right from the get-go I didn’t care for this short book (only 70 pages in a PDF file), and yet I wanted to. Believe me, I really wanted to.
But with the next story, entitled “Chimps, we move on to a post-apocalyptic London, where some apparently highly evolved chimps hide out in some underground bunker, and look upon some ghosts with a skeptic’s amusement and sometime annoyance. they go around pontificating about their role in the world in this landscape, and they continue to pontificate and talk about their scientists and their minds, and this and that and the other, and I just got completely lost by the end of this particular story.
It all made so much nonsense to me. But I’ll get into the nonsense in a moment, OK?
The whole book switches from interconnected story to interconnected story, going from chimps to sloths to dogs, basically rekindling a PLANET OF THE APES sort of dystopian future, where humans are no longer the dominant species and animals have jumped far ahead in the evolutionary road. Though honestly I couldn’t quite follow the jive.
Really, I tried to follow the story, right to the ending vignette, trying to figure out the point of this apparent evolving-towards-some-biblical-eternal-life-while-the-doomsday-machine-preps-to-kill-everybody-else sort of story, but I really just could not understand. I think it was the author’s decision to go from one group of characters to the next, and make a story cycle much like the science fictional equivalent to Faulkner’s GO DOWN, MOSES, just complicates and even obliterates whatever point the author was trying to make. It’s like he took the PLANET OF THE APES motif and put it into a Gertrude Stein, nonsense literature blender and mixed it all up. Which on one level makes me almost respect the guy for certain literary aspirations. But in the end it just leaves me confused.
Beyond the heavy redundancies in the first vignette of the book, I actually felt that the author provided some rather interesting nuance within this book in terms of his phraseology. “She spent a good ten minutes staring blankly out of the window, her breathing slowing as the vista of emptiness before her sank in.” As an aspiring writer myself, I look for poetic phrases like this; so kudos to Mister Orchard for achieving such touches of nuance.
But considering the rough beginning, and the fact that beyond a small comprehension throughout that still left me confused overall, is that really enough?
I give this book 2 out of 4. You show some promise with this one, Mister Orchard, but I will have to see more from you to see how that promise will play out.
***
Buy "Laikanist Times" on Amazon
Buy "Laikanist Times" on Barnes and Noble
The joys of literature transcend the evils of the world. I believe in its miraculious baptism and emotional power of the words trickling down the page. To me, there is no higher artform...
Latest Review: "Laikanist Times" by Dylan Malik Orchard
