The Troika

Rating:
Summary: Truly a fantastic shard of dementia
Review: Alex, Eva and Naomi are a jeep, an old woman and a dinosaur, respectively. Or maybe not. They're walking across and endless desert and they can't die. Or maybe not.

The Troika by Stepan Chapman is truly an excellent book, witty, profane, brilliant, demanding... much like Samuel R Delany's 'Dhalgren' or Philip K Dick's 'Valis' but not derivative of anything, it plays around with identity, with history, mythmaking, delusion, good, evil, insanity and redemption. It rewards repeated readings, and is rapidly becoming one of my favorite books.

Rating:
Summary: Spectacular.
Review: I am the kind of person who can't really like a movie if I can't understand it, or the plot is rife with holes. I did not have that problem with this book. Chapman's lyrical, beautiful writing carried me through this tale of three lost souls, and I loved the book because of it. This is the kind of book you want to reread the minute you finish, so you can understand it more, and experience its characters again. This is one of my favorites.

Rating:
Summary: Spectacular.
Review: I am the kind of person who can't really like a movie if I can't understand it, or the plot is rife with holes. I did not have that problem with this book. Chapman's lyrical, beautiful writing carried me through this tale of three lost souls, and I loved the book because of it. This is the kind of book you want to reread the minute you finish, so you can understand it more, and experience its characters again. This is one of my favorites.

Rating:
Summary: An okay ending but took too long to get there
Review: It is a strange world of machines and dinosaurs and purple suns. I get so many writers and artists and songs going through my head as I read that I have to put it down to realize it's just one book. Bits of Burroughs, Dali, Douglas Adams, Early Pink Floyd. It's all in there, I'm not kidding. It's the strangest book I've ever read because it is a dream. Not a few dream sequences, an actual dream. Take a break from reality. Plus it gives you the chance to support a small press--The Ministry of Whimsy Press. Aren't there enough Disneys out there?

Rating:
Summary: Phillip K. Dick Award winner 98'. Beautiful & grotesque.
Review: It is a strange world of machines and dinosaurs and purple suns. I get so many writers and artists and songs going through my head as I read that I have to put it down to realize it's just one book. Bits of Burroughs, Dali, Douglas Adams, Early Pink Floyd. It's all in there, I'm not kidding. It's the strangest book I've ever read because it is a dream. Not a few dream sequences, an actual dream. Take a break from reality. Plus it gives you the chance to support a small press--The Ministry of Whimsy Press. Aren't there enough Disneys out there?

Rating:
Summary: A challenging read, but worth the effort
Review: Let me start with a warning: this is a difficult book to read. You can't skim it or read without your full attention like you can with -- well, with almost everything. The characters switch bodies (or think they do), they're unreliable narrators whose perceptions may not match reality, they contradict themselves, there are flashbacks and dream sequences galore. Only well into the book is it possible to even get any idea of what's going on. As confusing as The Troika can be, it is very much worth the effort. Trust is required here. You're on a drive, but someone else is at the wheel. Slide into the moment, enjoy the view and stop worrying so much about where you're going. You *are* going somewhere, but the trip itself is the best part of the experience. There are stories and images in The Troika that will stay with me for a long, long time. There are passages in the book that are as beautiful and carefully sculpted as anything I've ever read: the line of girls with their tongues frozen to the parking meters; skating upside down along the bottom of the ice; the fish-headed sacrifice who escapes moments before her heart is cut out. I was reminded of Dick, Kafka and others, but Chapman's voice is unique and original, and he clearly has a love of language and words. The Troika was one of the strangest books I've ever read, and among the best I've come across in several years.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Pre-Publication "Buzz" For The Troika
Review: Publisher's Weekly recently reviewed The Troika and wrote "abounds with savage imagery reminiscent of William S. Burroughs, and, sentence for sentence, the writing is brilliant, lucid, and poetic...as startling and satisfying as a painting by Dali, Magritte or Klee, whose compositions it resembles." Other advance reviews, from writers such as Kathe Koja, John Shirley, and Brian Stableford, have compared The Troika to the work of such writers as Kurt Vonnegut, Angela Carter, Terry Southern, Italo Calvino, Philip K. Dick, and Mervyn Peake. If you like those writers, chances are, you will like The Troika.

Rating:
Summary: Comment by Author
Review: The Troika concerns three mental patients, who are being held prisoner by a mad doctor, inside a mad insane asylum. The entire story takes place in the afterlife, among the ghosts and the angels. Other than that, it's a perfectly normal gothic romance.

Rating:
Summary: An okay ending but took too long to get there
Review: This was a story too long in the telling, too disjointed, hard to follow, and quite frankly boring. "Skimmed" alot of pages to find any story. A parable of humanity's life and death struggle to survive....yes; interesting....no! In condensed format would make a good comic book and would be more interesting.

Rating:
Summary: and you thought you had problems...
Review: Three connected, lost souls wander the desert submerged in madness and despair. Did I mention that one of them is a Jeep? This surreal story is at once intensely tragic and hopeful. I highly recommend it.