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Summary: The World Beyond the Wave of Terror - A Prophecy
Review: Great books talk to every generation of every age. They have different things to say, in different ways each time. I ordered R. E. Klein's book before September 11, 2001. I received it and read it after the day of horrible rage of evil. I ponder how the book would have talked to me before that day. I am sure I would have liked its fascinating story, its moral stand and its enjoyable style. Then, it would have been a fantasy, only a fantasy. It would have been an unimaginable, poetic saga of Fancy Land with subtle meaningful messages about the inner workings of people. I would have read it with excitement and my breath withheld, but knowing all the while - in my subconscious - the fictitious nature, unlikely occurrence of its story. I would have appreciated it as an enthralling book. Now I say it is a prophetic book. It contains a prophecy capable of being born only from a subtle thinker who is sensitive to hidden currents of history forming forces.The ingenuity of evil released a wave of sheer horror inundating our world with insane menace and filth. This horrific milestone of history changed us drastically, significantly and irreversibly. I started to read this book unprepared for finding the precise description and in-depth analysis of our current malaise and struggle. I was up to a surprise. R. E. Klein's portrayal of the world after the Wave is uncannily similar to our current experience with raging evil forces. Millions of us, everyday average people are following Paul Sant's adventurous journey, his fight for survival and betterment of our world after September 11. R. E. Klein's novel has already been tested by changing times and it has proven itself - and its author's talent - worthy of the appreciation of different generations, different ages and different conditions. I believe it is a great book for all generations to come. It will always be meaningful and enriching as long as evil attempts to assail goodness.
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Summary: Superb Fantasy for Bibliophiles & People who like to Ponder
Review: I read this book back in '98 when the publisher made the uncorrected manuscript available to my then employer as a perk.
I had nightmares about tsunami waves that engulfed my part of the world for a week after reading this book. Strangely, I always survived but didn't stumble across fascinating creatures like the Gugs or the omninous yellow VW. Anyone who rags on this title is either an ignoramous or an unimaginative dullard or both! Read it. You'll like it.
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Summary: Superb Fantasy for Bibliophiles & People who like to Ponder
Review: I read this book back in '98 when the publisher made the uncorrected manuscript available to my then employer as a perk.
I had nightmares about tsunami waves that engulfed my part of the world for a week after reading this book. Strangely, I always survived but didn't stumble across fascinating creatures like the Gugs or the omninous yellow VW. Anyone who rags on this title is either an ignoramous or an unimaginative dullard or both! Read it. You'll like it.
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Summary: Against the Squishiness of Reality
Review: Most fantasies follow fairly strict conventions: They tend to either adopt or adapt one of the existing congeries of folklore such as Camelot, Middle Earth, the Brothers Grimm, Star Trek, and so on. There are very few free-form practitioners of the art who take you down entirely different paths "where no man has gone before." Off hand, I can think of only three: the late John Cowper Powys, Olaf Stapledon, and Edgar Allan Poe. Reading THE HISTORY, I felt I was in the world of Poe's NARRATIVE OF A. GORDON PYM: There was a sense that anything could happen. The giant wave that inundates the world not only destroys but seems to modify the nature of reality. Solid land could suddenly turn squishy. Strange monsters from the sea, called Gugs, prey on man. A lemur becomes a man and creates a disfunctional anti-human society. Ships without sails or oars sail against the current, because that is where "they" want to go. Then there is the matter of the horror in the yellow Volkswagen. Klein is obviously a bibliophile. The only things that stem the irreality are -- books! When the narrator, Paul Sant, stumbles upon a library, the tide begins to turn against the squishiness. In the first part of history, the one tower of sanity is Hiram Bell, who holds tight onto one book, Stoddard's STEAM ENGINES, and manages to create an island of reality. As I finished the last pages of this book, I can only express the hope that Klein continues writing. He is a real original, and he has something to say that needs saying in our present world of increasing squishiness.
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Summary: Warning! This books contains a warning!
Review: R E Klein has artfully achieved unity between fine literature (his obvious passion) and fantasy. Klein's pregnant imagination provides a stimulating saga that allows us to accompany Paul Sant on his serendipidous journey through a strangely familiar post diluvian new world. The newness, however, is confined to landscape and odd and frightful creatures; our hero discovers that all that is good and bad in human nature has remained constant. The Luciferian Saul provides a warning, not for the future but for the present: beware the politically correct who are bent on subsuming free thinkers into the inspissated gloom that is the midden of their self reighteousness. Beware, indeed! A thoroughly good read: honest, imaginative, provocative and disturbing. What next from Mr Klein's pen?
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Summary: Warning! This books contains a warning!
Review: R E Klein has artfully achieved unity between fine literature (his obvious passion) and fantasy. Klein's pregnant imagination provides a stimulating saga that allows us to accompany Paul Sant on his serendipidous journey through a strangely familiar post diluvian new world. The newness, however, is confined to landscape and odd and frightful creatures; our hero discovers that all that is good and bad in human nature has remained constant. The Luciferian Saul provides a warning, not for the future but for the present: beware the politically correct who are bent on subsuming free thinkers into the inspissated gloom that is the midden of their self reighteousness. Beware, indeed! A thoroughly good read: honest, imaginative, provocative and disturbing. What next from Mr Klein's pen?
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Summary: literature has a new standard
Review: Robert Klein has written a masterpiece that will surely be the mainstay of literature classes for generations to come. Our parents studied Dickens, and we had Salinger. The future belongs to Klein. And it is a better future.
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Summary: Klein's encomium on English literature
Review: The author, aside from his merits as a novelist, includes as fine and enthusiastic an encomium on English prose literature as I remember reading. -- H. C. Tidian
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Summary: This book touched me in unique and unexpected fashion.
Review: There are four dramatic moments in my life that I will always remember. One of them is the day I finished reading this book. It was at an outdoor cafe. I had a cup of coffee that had long grown cold. The sky was greying. I sat back and closed my eyes and thought to myself, it doesn't get any better than this. I wondered how so much feeling and creativity and a way with words could be confined in one person. Every generation produces a thinker for it's times. R.E. Klein is probably a thinker for the ages. I found myself lost in this book and I don't think I will ever get out. And...I don't want to.
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Summary: A book to reread and to share with your friends
Review: This book draws in the reader from the first page. It is literate, elegant, and exciting. The story keeps coming to mind after you've read it once, and you'll want to share it with friends because you'll want to have people to discuss it with! This book reminds me of C.S. Lewis' "Perelandra" with its good-and-evil tug-of-war with the ocean as a background. I happened upon this book at the public library, have lent it out once, read it twice, and it's not due back for another week yet. I hope to find it on tape for my husband so WE can discuss it!
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