Children of the Sun
by Beth Lewis
Blurb:
Summer 1982. Deep in the Adirondack Mountains, over three hundred people live off-grid in a secret community. Atlas is a refuge for broken souls who long for a different life. Founded by the enigmatic Sol, the group now prepares for their final ceremony: the opening of the Golden Door. They believe they will cross to another world, to a new life where their past decisions never ended in tragedy.James Morrow is a rookie New York City reporter intent on making his name with an exposé of the crazy cult in the woods. He secures an invitation to the camp on the condition he tell the world of its wonders, but James is a sceptic. He's sure there must be more to the mysterious leader and his endgame than his followers have signed up for.James soon finds there is a darker side to the cult beyond the prayers and yellow robes. A group of children are treated like gods, there are iron strips embedded in the earth, and nobody talks about what's behind the gates of Sol's private sanctuary. As James learns the stories of the members and how they came to be there, he begins to understand the desperate nature of their beliefs - a desperation he knows all too well.As the final ceremony draws near, James must ask himself: what will it cost them to reach this other life? And is that a price he's willing to pay?
My Reaction:
I've had varying responses to some of this author's previous works. I enjoyed The Wolf Road, but found Bitter Sun so unpleasant that I didn't finish it (though did later do so much skimming of the end just to see how it ended that I probably might as well have done so). This one falls right in the middle. It's much better than Bitter Sun, but I couldn't say I enjoyed the reading experience.
The idea at the center of the book is interesting, but I found the story too drawn out. Maybe part of the issue is that there are three narrators; switching point of view can be an effective literary device, but it has to be used with care, because all too often it seems to bog things down. Just when you get into one thread of the story, perspective shifts, and you lose momentum (or at least I do)—and many times there's one perspective that's more interesting to read, and you find yourself resenting the shift back to the "boring" narrator.
Another problem (for me) was the back-and-forth and round-and-round of the narrators' internal monologues as they try to figure things out. Do they think the other character is bad or good—insane or a genius? Some of that may be just part of maintaining the mystery until the end, but at a certain point I stop caring and just want it to end. Characters who talk or think in endless circles are so frustrating to read! Ultimately, it could have been improved by a more ruthless editor.
Little Nit-Picks (with SPOILERS):
- Do we ever find out what happened to the child in the Florida camp? I guess it was an early experiment that went wrong? I don't recall if it was ever explained at all.
- I feel that grouping the three points of view under days of the week when it turns out that one is happening more than a decade later is a bit sneaky and misleading. If the book hadn't been broken up by day of week, fair enough, but I specifically questioned the various timelines early in the book, and that grouping under days of the week (along with references to the approaching eclipse) felt like a contract between author and reader that, yes, all three were happening concurrently. At least now I don't have to point out all the things in Eve's story that wouldn't have made sense in the 80s but maybe work for the late 90s...
- I also don't understand the urgency in Eve's search for the Adirondack camp. If she just wanted to find the camp, there was no rush, but she seemed to think she had a limited amount of time in which to find Sol and take revenge on him. However, didn't she remember enough to know that Sol had gone through the door (part of her reason for wanting revenge)? So why did she think he would be back on this particular day? Maybe I missed something...
- This is a little, petty thing, but it's funny to me when authors use a mix of American and British English. The incongruity takes me out of the story. Also, I had a dry little chuckle that in the fantasy alternate universe briefly revealed at the end of the book, the main differences we're let in on are that the colors of certain road signs are different (ooh, ahh), diner coffee is better, corndogs are worse, and "there is even a burgeoning national health service". OMG, the alternative-reality USA has seen the error of its ways and made their very own copy of the glorious NHS?! Yippee! (It really is an obsession for some people, isn't it?)
- I don't get the choice to make Root speak that way. It's unnecessary and just makes the book harder to read. I suspect it was mainly used to add another element of confusion and uncertainty to the story. Presumably Root speaks oddly because the sunbeams have limited interaction with the other people in the community, but they're surrounded by other people and hear them talking all the time. Also, the other sunbeams don't seem to speak in such a stunted fashion, so it still doesn't make sense. Maybe Root subconsciously affects this speech pattern to reflect a feeling of separation from the others. Who knows?!
- Some plot elements are nonsensical. For example, James has the opportunity to leave. He fears for his life, so has every motivation to get the heck out of there. He has a map/directions, which he used to find the camp only a week before, and he's all prepared to drive back out the way he came. However, he discovers that his keys are gone, and he doesn't know how to hot-wire a car, so he would need to walk out instead. He acts as though this is impossible because the directions are just sooooo confusing that he couldn't possibly follow them on foot. Oh, and he's not wearing boots. So. You get it. It's impossible, right? Yeah, the route he took must've been wide enough to fit his car through, and he could've followed those same directions in the car, but it's out of the question that he should be able to attempt it on foot. Are you nuts?! Anyway, you see my frustration here, right? It's dumb. Sure, ideally you'd want some water and boots, but if you're literally running for your life, you take a breath and get moving. If the author didn't want the guy to get out, she needed to give us a better reason than that. Even just "I couldn't leave those kids to die without trying one more time" would've been better.
- You can't have it both ways. This cult-that-isn't-a-cult is supposed to feel mostly warm and fuzzy by the end of the book, but they still engaged in some awful behavior. Branding people for disobedience?! Feeding innocent children metal to turn them into human batteries?
- So... Was Sol the father of all the sunbeams? Just Root? None of them at all? Why did they all know who their mothers were (different women in the group) but no comment on their fathers? Maybe I missed something that made this point completely clear.
- One of the things in this book that elicits the most "ARGH" reaction from me is the fact that everyone in the cult/group goes to the same alternative dimension/reality. Sol's premise, as I understand it, is that every decision we make creates a new fork in the road. He chose to work late one day, which resulted in a car accident that claimed the lives of his wife and daughter. He believes that there exists an offshoot of reality (another world) where he didn't work late, and so his family has survived and lives on. The same thing is supposed to be true for everyone in the group: There's a reality where they made "the other choice", and everything worked out for the best. But... First of all, do you realize how many choices we make every day? How many offshoot worlds there would have to be, if each decision created a fork in multiple directions to account for every possible option we could have chosen? Do I eat a sandwich for lunch or have pizza? Do I wear the red shirt or the blue? Do I look to the right or the left? Each of these creates another world—and multiply that by every person alive. And then each version of us in each reality faces a whole lifetime of further decisions and forks in the road. There would be infinite dimensions or realities! Or does The Universe somehow pick and choose which decisions are life-altering and only splits for those? UGH. And yet all the people in the group travel to the same alternate reality, so it seems like there's only this world and the other one... No, I'm sorry, but it's pure nonsense, even if I try to follow along with the theory for the sake of the story.
