Decimate

 

by Pa Rock

Reader

At the very young age of forty-four, Christopher Rice has a laundry-list of extraordinarily good novels that he has written and published.  Mr. Rice is a skilled plotter and storyteller, and his tales are always well researched and captivating.

"Decimate," Christopher Rice's most recent novel (or the most recent one that I have read), is a broad-stroke work of science fiction which has strong elements of horror and terror.  It centers on the (fictional) discovery by a Nazi doctor living in the US just after World War II of a brief state between life and death when a spirit of the departing person experiences great power before moving onto to another phase of existence.  The doctor managed to capture that essence and begin experimenting with it.   The transformation to a state where the essence could be captured involved exposure to an enormous sound and vibration stimulus.  Those who encountered that stimulus in life would have their power essence, something the author referred to as a "bloom," exposed to the world upon their deaths.

Rice's story involves two youngsters who were camping in a remote area of Glacier National Park one night with their father.   When the father got drunk and passed out, the son took off on his own to go exploring, and his protective older sister followed him.  When they were deep in the woods and far from camp, they inadvertently entered an area where the Nazi doctor's daughter and her employees were experimenting with the elements necessary to bring about the bloom.  The children were exposed to an enormous explosion from which they were ultimately hospitalized - and their father spent years trying to prove that they had suffered their trauma through an abduction by aliens.

Fast forward twenty years and the boy, now a young man, is a passenger on a jet airliner which suffers an airborne catastrophe and breaks apart in the air.  As the young man is dying in the plane, he is suddenly pulled from his seat and able to witness a green glowing essence forming in the seat that he had just vacated.  As the plane and people are plummeting to the earth, the young man gets off a very brief telepathic message to his sister who is teaching in a high school several hundred miles from the crash site.

The debris of the plane and passengers land in a remote mountainous area.  The young man, now essentially a spirit, is close to his passenger seat which is still occupied by the green essence.  A psychopath hillbilly who lives nearby arrives on the scene and begins hunting for treasure among the trash and carnage.  He comes upon the seat and quickly begins exhibiting new abilities which he connects to his find.  Then the brother is able to form a connection to his still-living sister, both young adults reconnect with their father, and the family quickly becomes involved with the dead daughter of the dead Nazi doctor - and her employees who have been working for years with the powers related to the essence that is formed between life and death - and a most interesting tale unfolds.

One of the best parts of "Decimate" is the tour that Christopher Rice gives his readers through the mind of his psychopath, Vernon Starnes.   The author places us in the world of an intellectually and socially challenged child and then imparts enough of the boy's history to where readers can clearly see the genesis of the monster that the child became as he entered adulthood.

Christopher Rice always peoples his novels with finely drawn, interesting characters, and he turns them loose to function in some great settings.  "Decimate" focuses on Glacier, my favorite national park.  Rice said in his afterword that his fear of heights forced him to ask a friend who was driving him up "Going-to-the-Sun" Road in Glacier Park, to do a U-turn and take him back down.  I managed that drive many years ago at the wheel of a big, boxy van, and it was probably the most white-knuckle experience of my life!  I also enjoyed his mentions of Sandpoint, Idaho, a town that I have visited twice - most recently last year - and always enjoy.

"Decimate" is the eleventh novel by Christopher Rice that I have read.  All have been different, and all have been intense and compelling.  If you are looking for a book that will both entertain and educate, you need look no further than Christopher Rice.   He is consistently good at his craft.