Writer, activist, poet and owner/editor of ThirdEye Magazine ( http://www.thirdeyepublications.com ), Jason Glover has created an interesting post-apocalyptic world of religion, inter-weaved with science fiction and catastrophe in his first novel, The Perception Experiment. The core of this story is that a God loving and worshiping man begins to question his own spirituality, life and the community of followers around him after some minor epileptic type episodes. The character undergoes a mental transformation that eggs his new questioning of religion onward into a journey of self-discovery through feelings and ideas new to his clouded, God-fearing mind. Glover weaves a world where everything is not as it seems to the naked eye, and the never ending battle between God and Satan has claimed the main character as a pawn in the game of Armageddon. As the character becomes more aware of the inner workings of the world around him, he becomes angry with the way things are and his mission takes him to a new awareness. The climactic scene of demons and angels battling near a Tower of Babel-esque fortress is coupled with a dramatic and stunning twist of fate. Glover has created a world of his own with an intriguing plot and characters.
Yet, some of the writing almost seems forced at times,
and just about every other sentence is
broken.
With a space.
Or a new thought is broken out by a one-lined paragraph.
Paragraph after paragraph broken into bundles.
The writing style itself is an experimental oblivion of clichés and semi-poetic one-liners littered with bible passages and alliterative verse in first person present tense. At times, the narrative dilutes the idea of the story behind The Perception Experiment to the point that some of it seems to be lost. This could just be a part of the writing style Glover is going after, however, if the paragraphs were meshed solidly together, this book would likely be less than half the length and a bit less tedious through some parts. While the imagination and dedication for storytelling is present, parts of the story become a jumble of half finished thoughts and somewhat whiny yearnings by the main character to understand "the big picture". Perhaps the storytelling style is intentional in an effort to convey the confusion of the hero. The narrator at times seems to confuse the story line with his internal thinking blended in with the main point. The feeling of the author using 'filler' material to make a short story into a novel are hard to shake. There are a few minor editing blemishes and various lines that could be re-written and worked into a more cohesive idea.
All that being said, this self-published novel is quite the valiant effort, and with a bit of honing, Jason Glover could become a strong and visionary fiction writer in our time.
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