PEARL RULE #004 @ p38

[The Beautiful Land] by [[Alan Averill]]

Rating: 2.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy steals a time machine that’s low on batteries and attempts to save girl from impending annihilation. ...You know how this goes.

Tak O’Leary is a Japanese-American television host who vanished off the grid after a failed suicide attempt. Samira Moheb is an Iranian-American military translator suffering from PTSD as a result of her time in the Iraq War. They have been in love from the moment they met, and because they never told each other, they are destined to be apart forever. But thanks to a mysterious invention buried deep in the Australian Outback, they now have one more chance to get it right.

Of course, it won’t be easy. Love never is. First they have to avoid being captured by a powerful and mysterious corporation. Then they must take down a deranged scientist who is trying to unleash a monstrous creature upon the world. Finally, there’s the matter of the invention—an impossible machine with the ability to destroy time itself. If Tak and Samira hope to reunite and save the world, they must use this machine to find a theoretical reality constructed by the thoughts of whoever is inside it. They must find the Beautiful Land.

Skillfully blending non-stop action with compassionate characters and a sharp sense of humor, The Beautiful Land is a novel unique in style and scope. It’s a love story with time machines. A science-fiction novel for people who don’t read science fiction. And an elegantly timeless tale about the nature of memory, heartache, and redemption.

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: Ten years ago, I’d’ve lapped this up...strange timeline shenanigans, portentous foreshadowing, and so on...but now, this manic pixie girl as love object of depressed dudebro makes me want to scream. I would probably not *love* the same basics with two men in the leads, but in the intervening time, that has become something I can actually find.

Off to the Little Free Library with you, tedious cishet stereotypes-from-the-1990s. Bring me the SFF with men in love, lust, or even just a defining partnership with each other. Maybe I only need queer SF now, and for sure I need SF for people who DO read SF.

Alan Averill's THE BEAUTIFUL LAND was a real surprise for me. I picked it up on a bit of a whim; the premise was interesting and I knew it won the 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, so I was curious. Technically it is speculative fiction, but the physics concept is so far beyond the bleeding edge that it is more fantasy than science fiction. The underlying physics premise is that of parallel universes, and Averill's story treats them as pliable to the point of being something that can be written and rewritten like scribbles on a dry erase board. Normally this loose treatment would bug me (I think the whole parallel universes thing is silly anyway), but not here. Averill uses the premise as little more than a crucible in which to grind and evolve his characters, and at this he does a masterful job.

Tak and Samira are both outsiders and old friends, and they are individually interesting from the outset. They are both on the edge of life and about to fall off as the story begins. They are drawn into a situation where all of reality is threatened and they are in a unique position to try and save it. This is where things get interesting. If these two had just picked up the task of saviors from the start, the story would ring false. Their individual realities are awful and it would be unrealistic for them to just jump in and try to save a universe(s) of people who never cared about them. But it is their unrequited love for each other that motivates them and draws them in. As the story develops, so do Tak and Samira. By story end they have evolved to the point where they pass up a selfish chance to save only each other to finally care about the larger world.

The story is particularly sustained by Averill's writing. His prose are engaging and a pleasure to read. His plotting is fast and linear, pulling the reader along from one disaster to the next. His scenes are just the right size to engage the reader while still serving the rapid plot pace. All together the effect is such that it is hard to put the book down once you start reading. There is no particularly radical theme and this novel will not change the world for you, but you will definitely be happy that you read it. I personally look forward to what Averill does next.
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I enjoyed reading this book. I read it in 24 hours. The characters are solid and the story is interesting. The time travel/multiple universe premise foundation of the plot works well, and is imaginative. This book would make a great movie. I hope to read more from this author in the future.

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I received this book from Goodreads First Reads.
The relationship between Tak and Samira makes this story so good. Samira's PTSD is explored in detail, and when Tak returns to her life (His death had been faked by the Axon Corporation) she begins to find joy in her life again. The story is quirky, sometimes very creepy with the "birds" killing everyone and a very enjoyable read. ( )

I don't use star ratings, so please read my review!

(Description nicked from B&N.com.)

“Takahiro O’Leary has a very special job working for the Axon Corporation as an explorer of parallel timelines—as many and as varied as anyone could imagine. A great gig—until information he brought back gave Axon the means to maximize profits by changing the past, present, and future of this world.

If Axon succeeds, Tak will lose Samira Moheb, the woman he has loved since high school—because her future will cease to exist. A veteran of the Iraq War suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, Samira can barely function in her everyday life, much less deal with Tak’s ravings of multiple realities. The only way to save her is for Tak to use the time travel device he “borrowed” to transport them both to an alternate timeline.

But what neither Tak nor Axon knows is that the actual inventor of the device is searching for a timeline called the Beautiful Land—and he intends to destroy every other possible present and future to find it.

The switch is thrown, and reality begins to warp—horribly. And Tak realizes that to save Sam, he must save the entire world.”

The idea of alternate realities is, of course, nothing new. Science fiction writers have been tackling this trope for decades. This one is unique, though, in exploring the concept of what would happen if realities were eliminated, and how one might go about accomplishing such an end. There are some elements of horror embedded in this story, as the head of the Axon Corporation is willing to commit some truly heinous acts to get what he wants.

Despite some scenes with nasty things in them, there’s a surprising amount of humor in this novel. One of the early chapters showing what happens when Tak vanishes from an airplane mid-flight had me laughing out loud. The humor does become less pronounced as the story progresses and things degenerate from bad to worse. By the end, the humor is mostly of the grim variety, but it does help to underscore what’s going on.

What makes this book work so well, in my opinion, are the characters. Tak and Samira mesh together perfectly despite their differences, and you can really sense the connection between them. I was especially drawn to Samira, who is the victim of severe trauma due to her experiences in the Iraq war. The author creates a vivid portrait of a woman going through intense suffering and yet still managing to hang on, even if she teeters on the brink as often as not. Tak’s natural happy-go-lucky attitude is a good foil for her depression, and the two keep each other going as the world falls down around them.

There’s something about this novel that sucked me in, and I’m not sure I can put into words exactly what it is. I’m pretty sure the heart of it lies with the relationship between Tak and Samira, though. This story is beautiful and tragic at the same time, not in a smarmy way, but in a way that makes your breath catch in your throat. To read this book is to watch two good people go through hell and know that it’s not likely that things will end well, even if they manage to save the world. And if you’re like me, you’re going to want to reach into the book and find some way to help these two because you’ve come to like them and understand them so well.

I don’t often read a debut novel with such depth, or one that makes me feel so deeply for the characters. The Beautiful Land is a wonderful story, filled with both humor and pathos, and I hope that Averill continues writing and produces more books for me to devour.

This review originally appeared on Owlcat Mountain on August 1, 2013.
http://www.owlcatmountain.com/the-beautiful-land/