Erik's Reviews > The Library at Mount Char

When I was studying poetry, I attended a good number of poetry readings. Some were given by seasoned poets; others, by fresh MFA grads. The two experiences are wildly different, as large a contrast as visiting DisneyWorld is from visiting the county fair. And it is the latter ones I came to prefer.

The veterans’ readings were performative: they already knew where to pause, where to emphasize, where to stop and look at the audience. Maybe not consciously but it was there, ingrained from practice.

By contrast, the novices’ readings were exploratory. They were much more likely to stumble over words, to jumble their cadences, to alter their tempo mid-poem. As if they were testing out their options, trying to discover which one was best. Attending such a reading felt as if I were an active member of some lyrical expedition to map out a poetical future.

I bring this up because Mount Char, as a debut novel, feels much the same. I can’t specifically point to any line or character or chapter and claim, “Hey this is less polished than you might find from a more experienced author.” And yet the Library of Mount Char has a roughness to it, a thrilling sense of authorial exploration. The characters aren’t fake, but they don’t quite feel natural either. The book extends a good 25% beyond where most other novels would end. And so on. None of which is a criticism. The author was clearly not following a personal formula, but creating it.

And it has a fresh plot too. Mount Char focuses on a set of adopted siblings who are training to be gods, under the tutelage of the head god himself. Not a god in the traditional sense, though. More in the sense of a run-away superintelligence, in that he acquired that knowledge that allowed him to get better at acquiring knowledge which made him better still at acquiring knowledge, a pattern that continued until he reached a state of omniscience but not omni-attention.

That’s a subtle but important distinction, which I think explains why some readers describe this book as difficult or confusing. Dealing with omniscience makes it tricky to track who knows what and when do they know it. Ultimately, though, the plot and the novel structure shouldn't be too difficult to follow. The Library at Mount Char is neither post-modern, nor particularly philosophical. It's a good ol' fashioned revenge story, and like all solid revenge stories, has a nice twist or two.

My one unadulterated complaint is the pitifully small scope of the setting. It’s completely dissonant with the plot’s scope. We’re talking god of the universe stuff here, yet 90% of the novel is set in a tiny suburban neighborhood. It does help add to the novel’s, um, novelty, but gives it a satirical vibe I’m not sure the author actually intended.

Final conclusion: You’ll probably like it. Unless you’re a religious fundamentalist. In which case you probably won’t like it. But that’ll just leave you more time to read your holy book. Hey, win, win.