Liberation: a magical road-novel about America in collapse, Bradbury meets Kerouac
Brian Francis Slattery's novel Liberation is a magical, riveting poetic story of a post-economic America where the dollar has vanished and slavery has sprung up in the resulting economic chaos. It concerns the adventures of the Slick Six, a gang of fun-loving super-criminals whose unbeatable fighter, Marco, is at sea on a prison-ship when the nation falters. The guards on the ship kill the warden, begin to trade prisoners to slavers for food and fuel, and Marco kills them all, sets the ship free, sails the world, and comes back to what's left of America.
America has dissolved. New York is now the barony of The Aardvark, the crimelord who put Marco away in the first place, as punishment for the Slick Six's incursions against his territories. The Aardvark presides over the capitalization and enforcement of slave-farms across America, and he hunts all of the Slick Six with a mindless, unwavering determination to wreak perfect vengeance.
Marco resolves to find and reunite the Slick Six and to use them as a spearhead in a war on the institution of slavery and on The Aardvark, who reaps a fortune from it. And therein begins the tale, a road-novel that tears back and forth across America, told from the point of view of The Vibe, or fate, which guides the hands of all the dozens of remarkable characters in the story.
Slattery's prose style is complex, poetic, visionary and reeling, a cross between Kerouac and Bradbury, salted with Steinbeck. His people are all magic -- a tribe of stoners called the Americoids, a resurgent Sioux nation led by a visionary war-chief, a hive-like murderous circus, a free-state in Asheville presided over by an American Brahmin-turned-mayor, the prisoners on the liberated ship.
In Marco, we meet one of the great tortured heroes of fiction: an unstoppable badass who is haunted by his past as a child-soldier and who hunts now for peace with his past and a future he can be proud of. There is action and dashing in the story and true love and music and cooking and acrobatics and commerce and economics and crime and nobility. It's a heady stew, a road novel shot through with mysticism and a love of freedom that soars over the pages.
In case it's not clear, I loved this book. I can't wait to read more (I've just ordered Spaceman Blues, Slattery's first novel). This is a book to fall in love with.
the latest
latest episodes
now to add zombie apocalypse theme into the book and it will be a dreamboat....drool. Will be picking it up right away.
So they finally novelized Fallout?
CHINA TIGER is my new battle cry!
Is this like where you get a kid persistently shouting about wanting something and everyone in earshot pretends the kid doesn't exist?
I'm on about page 50 and I can barely put the book down to sleep and work. I've read Spaceman Blues and it's poetic inspirations come even more clearly to the front. It reads like a long song, kinda like an epic poem, and is really really good. I'm happy to see this on your site, it's my first visit here and wham, here's something I'm already excited about!
Cory on which continent did you read this book? Or did you start it one and finish it on another?
too soon?
I really think you should hold off on the book reviews, Cory. You're giving me too much great work to read. I read "City At The End of Time", I just finished "Anathem" last month and I'm now reading "Saturn's Children" because of you, and now this...thanks a lot.
The China Tiger has been turned over to a rehabilitation center for troubled predators.
Bradbury meets Kerouac, you say? I may have to check this out sometime soon.
This is indeed a great book, although I have to say that "Spaceman Blues" is my favorite of the two. Hope you'll enjoy it.
I'm hooked. Definitely on the list.
Liberation is one of my recent faves as well. Just thought I'd drop you guys a line and point you to the free e-book version of Spaceman Blues (Slattery's first book) that we're hosting on Tor.com until early next week, in celebration of the release of Liberation. You do need to be registered on Tor.com to download, but doing so free and relatively painless. Enjoy!
It may be great friction but these post apocalyptic America stories are a little unrealistic. It would of course never happen this way in real life. They are a kind of nostalgia for the old west.
Unrealistic fiction?
What an absurd idea! Nothing good can come of it! It won't entertain. Won't provoke interesting thoughts! And could never ever shape and/or benefit society in any form.
/sarcasm