Monday, December 22, 2008

The Unseen by T.L. Hines

I'm going to state my honest opinion about this book - I didn't particularly like it, and I certainly didn't understand the point of this story. I could reach far into my imagination and my literary background and surmise that the author thinks that what is seen by others is the "insatiable hunger to seek out other people - an uncontrollable need to feed the Dark Vibration." And what is beneath this very unnatural desire is the unseen - "they watched while other people suffered." Society's bizarre fascination with reality shows is reflected in this book...secretly watching others and doing - nothing.

Basically, you live the entire 383 pages of this story in the mind of a man who has no memory, who doesn't know who he is and who lives his life secretly spying on people. Lucas has a brilliant mind stuffed with bizarre information. He meets a whole group of people just like him - people who sneak around spying on others. This group is the Creep Club, and they thrive on watching people harm each other. Lucas, the main character, is sort of freaked out by the Creep Club because all he does is spy on people in public places and create imaginary histories for them. These other folks like to secretly film other people hurting each other. Kind of sick.

As the story unfolds you are introduced to a host of people and the weirdness deepens. Lucas tries to warn these Creep Club victims...only to be wrongly accused of the crime himself by one guy and then be thanked and helped by another. There are some so-called government agents - "Dark Suits" that are trying to bust up the Creep Club. There are the "Dark Years" that Lucas is haunted by and that really distracts him the more the story unfolds. One group chases the other until the reader is totally bamboozled.

This book has a lot of tedious detailed descriptions loosely tying together a lot of disconnected story lines that never come together to form anything meaningful. Unless you are a criminal clairvoyant with a deep longing to work for a secret government agency, you're going to reach the end of this too long story and not have a clue what you just read. At least that was my experience. I could use my own imagination and paste some symbolism to all of this, but it would be a waste of time. I'm going to move on to other things. You can make up your own mind about this one. Check it out here.

1 comment:

TL Hines said...

Hi, Kim - Thanks for reading and reviewing; I'm sorry the story didn't spark you. (That's okay--we all have different tastes, and thank God for that, huh?)