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At Play in the Killing Fields - Joseph DeMarco
| | Title: At Play in the Killing Fields
Subtitle: The False Prophet of Fennimore Place
Author: Joseph DeMarco
Reviewer: Barry Allen
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Publisher URL: http://www.authorhouse.com/BookStore/ItemDetail~bo okid~43104.aspx
Publication Date: Feb 2007
Review Date: March 2007
ISBN: 9781425986698
Price: USD10.40
Pages: 276
Format: Paperback
Topic: Science Fiction
At Play in the Killing Fields is a series of three very different science fiction stories that center around Joe Kaye (See also: The False Prophet of Fennimore Place). Although each story is significantly different they seem to carry similar themes about energy, education and the conservation of our planet's natural resources.
The first story is called Nightmarchers, and is written in first person where Joe Kaye is the narrator telling the story. Nightmarchers is a Hawaiian ghost story about the desecration of Hawaiian Heiaus (Temples) and a brief history of the overthrow of the Hawaiian Monarchy. In the story the narrator (Joe Kaye) is a teacher and writer who is haunted by a ghost because of his grandfather's participation in the destruction of Puu Kapolei (an ancient Hawaiian temple). After a recurring dream of following a little green bird, Joe Kaye starts to expect that he might have been a Hawaiian in one of his past lives.
The second story, titled The Chemicals Between Us, takes place on earth, 2000 some-odd years after mankind has been extinct. When Drogen a strange alien, with his genitals on his face, delivers a package to earth, he gets more than he bargained for when he takes a book that seems to be haunted by ghost of Joe Kaye. Through the book (that Drogen takes) and flashback memories the reader observes Joe Kaye's philosophies about life and energy.
The Chemicals Between Us is really interesting and deals with a lot of holistic ideas about energy and dis-ease (See also: Heal Your Body, The Celestine Prophecy, What the Bleep Do We Know About Anything, The Secret of Shambhala).
It is during the story The Chemicals Between Us that the reader learns about Joe Kaye’s prophecy about the end of the human race and various other strange practices such as Voodoo Botany.
The third story The Spit of Siann takes place back in the present several years after Nightmarchers but before Joe Kaye makes the prophecy. The third story is written in third person, but maintains a child’s perspective through the eyes of a messed up little 12-year-old named Siann Campbell. Siann is in seventh grade and her teacher is a weird hippy from Hawaii named Joe Kaye. Siann gives her teacher a hard time because her father has died, and she is being raised by a mother who has little time and even less energy to raise a 12 year-old. The story focuses more on education but ultimately talks about what Joe Kaye refers to as the End of Time.
This book is very imaginative and reminds me of a cross between Ernest Hemingway's Islands in the Stream and anything by Philip K. Dick. |
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