Books

by Joseph Bentz

I've been on a fantasy/sci-fi kick at the library, but instead of researching what books might be good, I troll the shelves looking for a likely candidate. Sometimes I find a good book and sometimes I don't. For me, this one falls on the side of "didn't find a good one".

Jeremy falls through the water of an icy lake after a disagreement with his girlfriend. When he quits falling, he lands in a world where music is outlawed and finds he has become a prophet with a duty to lead the beleaguered people to the promised land. He determines that their Emajus is the same as God and in this land, Emajus is in the music for those who open their hearts and minds to him.

I suppose it was an interesting book, but the religious angle was unexpected. It wasn't apparent from the blurb that this was religious fiction - a genre I generally enjoy. Also, I never got the sense that Jeremy did much as far as leading the people, though they did end up where they were going and achieved their ultimate goal of rebuilding the temple. However, it could be argued that Jeremy's guide less trek through this strange land is exactly the point the author is trying to make.

Throughout reading the book, I understood it to be a comatose dream of Jeremy's after being rescued from the frozen lake in his own world and time.

One final note, in all descriptions of the book, the blurb make mention of Jeremy being a "stranger in a strange land". I kind of expected more a relation to Heinlein's novel of the same name. Maybe it's been too long since I read that book, but I just didn't see the similarities.