REVIEW: Frederik Pohl – ALL THE LIVES HE LED
It’s about a guy who winds up in debt, trying to stay one step ahead of the law, finding himself in rebuilt Pompeii in the the midst of a terrorist plot to kill millions.
On the face of it, that sounds like a pretty cool story. Except, a lot of that story happens off-screen.
OK, I know Frederik Pohl is considered one of the great ones, and I thoroughly enjoyed this book. He does a great job with characters and emotions and giving the reader plenty of scenery and substance. It’s readable, goes quickly, and doesn’t leave you wondering about niggling little plot threads that don’t get sewn up.
Except, I was a little disappointed.
The basics: Brad Sheridan is a “street rat” type of guy living in the projects of New York with his parents, who found themselves penniless after Yosemite turned into a giant volcano that spewed ash over most of the planet and destroyed the United States as we know it. So after scrawling around as a two-bit scam artist, Sheridan eventually makes his way to Pompeii, where they’ve “rebuilt” the city in the form of holographic restorations.
Sheridan gets work as an Indentured, meaning they pretty much can make him do whatever he wants until his debt is paid up. So he spends a lot of his time wishing he was anywhere else.
Told in the first person, the story takes us through the circumstances Sheridan finds himself experiencing. And just when his life can’t get any more miserable (he thinks), he meets the lovely Gerda, who turns out to be a whole lot more than he thinks (or is it less?).
His life basically starts to unravel after witnessing certain things he shouldn’t, and stumbling across things he shouldn’t, and knowing things he shouldn’t. All the while watching the news reports of the recent outbreak of a new disease that could wipe out humanity.
And trying to stay away from the cops, who think he might be tied to the terrorists who are spreading the disease, using the festival at Pompeii as Ground Zero.
Again, it’s a good read. Easy on the eyes. Nothing complicated about it.
But…
Brad Sheridan is weak as a protagonist. He takes no definitive action to determine the course of the story. Things happen to him, and that makes him a weak lead character. When he does finally grow a pair and start taking matters into his own hands, the book’s almost done. The major plot points have been resolved.
Gerda is a much more interesting character, mainly because of her history and the path she took to get to Pompeii. And since her arc intersects more with the terror plot, I would be much more interested in seeing that story. But sadly, most of that happens off screen.
The ideas presented in Lives aren’t new:
– Boy meets Girl
– Boy falls for Girl
– Girl may be a terrorist planning to use a bio-weapon to wipe out humanity…
I thought many of the sub-plot elements would have made a more interesting story. The idea of Yellowstone erupting into a massive volcano and creating a completely different world order is intriguing. It raises a set of questions worth exploring on their own. How would it affect the economies of the world? Technology? Medicine? Politics? Food distribution, world markets… to see the United States devastated like that would certainly create all sorts of havoc on the world stage.
And I’m always a sucker for a zeppelin in a story.
But Brad Sheridan is just bland. Milk toast. And that soured me on the whole book. His pining for Gerda, even after learning about her past, seemed just a little too unrealistic. I kept wondering when he was going to drive the story, and he never really did. And although that approach challenges me as a writer because it goes against the expected, it frustrated me as a reader.
The ending carries a “humanity is not all that bad” motif, and when coupled with Sheridan’s finally getting a spine because of his new circumstances at the end of the book, redeems the story somewhat, enough that I can say “go read it”.
So… go read it. And tell me what you think.
