Planet of the Owls by Hertzan Chimera

Planet of the Owls Reviews

• 
  Nicholas Tillemans

  I had read an intriguing short story Mike wrote years ago, which served as a glimpse into the Planet of the Owls world. Some years later he published his book; and I've been meaning to read it for several years now. Mike has a way of taking his audience dangerously far into the future to see human existence as an outsider would and to see human civilization in the grander scheme of things. His cynical, nihilistic narratives in Planet of the Owls take us to a dying Earth teeming with giant birds, puppeteered by death angels. There is a heaping helping of graphic mutilation, murder and disgusting bestial sex (with giant birds and human hybrid birds). As such, it is not for a general audience. But it is worth a look, if you're in the market for something really different from what you would expect.
  
  With its inventiveness and unexpectedness, Planet of the Owls is bound to be a challenging read for anyone. Mike has a lot of bizarre stuff to get out of his head and onto the page. He has a curious mind and is no slouch when it comes to philosophizing and framing out all manner of thought experiments with science and historical examples. He comfortably describes tremendously disturbing acts and bizarre happenings in full blown technicolor without so much as breaking a sweat. His mind has been down these pathways again and again, which shows on the written page. There's something to distress anyone in this book. Even I nearly set it down at one point; and I can stomach almost anything.
  
  As wildly imaginative and unusual as the book is (and perhaps because of this), the storytelling itself could have benefited from either a single fixed narrative or stronger characterizations of the two narratives to help the reader lose sight of all the wires and string-pulling going on. As other reviewers have mentioned, I found the narrative shifts awkward. The first person narrative shifts back and forth between a Chinese schoolgirl who is transforming into a bird god and a young man who is somehow outlasting the rest of humanity. The internal monologues of these characters are quite homogenous, almost as if the same character is sometimes a Chinese schoolgirl and sometimes a young British man. It is the plot that sets them apart from each other. The schoolgirl is always explaining her culture in terms of how it contrasts with Western culture, as if she is an outsider to her own culture and age group. The characters often seem to know things only an omniscient narrator would know. Usually, the storyline is well-enough paced and clear enough that this does not present a problem, though there is at least one chapter where I am almost still not sure who was supposedly narrating; and this in a book where characters present themselves as different individuals, transforming into gods, appearing interchangeably in the future, past and present in any corner of the universe, murdered in one scene to live in the next.
  
  As usual Mike has a lot to say and a rich world to describe. Planet of the Owls could have easily been twice as long; and it would have been three times the book for that. Some chapters feel impatient, as if the author himself were looking for a way out. Spending time in a place with someone (no matter where or with whom), one cannot help but find things to like about the place and the person. The impatience of the book is what disappoints me. Some of the characters are almost likable. Some human qualities portrayed nearly redeem humanity despite its shortcomings. Some of the death angels are almost endearing. As soon as I start to grow any attachment to anything or anyone in the book, they are taken away from me or I am whisked off somewhere else.
  
  Keeping with its forlorn tone, the book ultimately culminates in a transcendent end-of-the-world space ballet. This cold ending carries all the sadness of death and the meager hopes one might entertain in the days afterwards. Prepare for a dark ending. Not even a corny Diana Ross song can rescue it from the black hole that's got it.
  
  (3.5 stars)
• 
  Hertzan Chimera

  What I learned from (writing) this book is that mankind has no idea what spirituality is - there's no way he'll ever know, he's is adrift on the ether, forgotten.
• 
  Skye

  A very very strange book...