Kudos to A Subtle Armageddon

One Dave Smith offers one of the most impressive interpretations of my book A Subtle Armageddon: 

A Subtle Armageddon: Book 1 of the Infinity Series by Charles Martin Cosgriff was an interesting story about a man's discovery of personal freedom. Using the character "Man," he lays out an allegory of self-discovery in an atmosphere of strict control in a world where all is premeditated, prescribed, and predetermined to be the best path to follow.

While the storyline is compelling, following Man as he travels through his life, waging an internal battle with a "voice" that continues to make attempts to bring him back into line with the prescribed path, I found something even better.

In the beginning, Man had no concept of anything, not of his surroundings, not his purpose, and not of himself. So Cosgriff has the task of describing the most mundane things as Man, who is not even Man at this point, discovers them, takes note of them, and makes some kind of sense of them. I marveled at his skill in the writing craft when he applied language and writing mastery to do this, while keeping sophisticated readers interested, without losing them. Yes, it was a slow starter for sure. But I remained interested because of how Cosgriff did this. He was not able to use a common term like library or shadow, for example. He had to find a way to describe a shadow as it is discovered anew by Man. And he does it well, time after time. Taking the well-known and writing it as if it were unknown is an incredibly difficult undertaking.

There is certainly a political commentary within A Subtle Armageddon, hearkening to A Brave New World for sure, maybe a little bit of Atlas Shrugged. Based on the preview at the end of the story, that is what is in store for at least book 2 of the series.

I give A Subtle Armageddon: Book 1 of the Infinity Series by Charles Martin Cosgriff four stars because of his ability to describe familiar, well-known, mundane items in our world as if they had never been seen before. The book breaks into a brighter, more adventurous arc by the end of this Book. There is certainly hope that Book 2 will be as good.

I really like this analysis. See for yourself here to find out if Mr. Smith's thoughts are accurate.

Me? Yes, I think he says it well. I think he gets my self imposed starting point: the man in the story begins as a completely blank slate and grows from there. Nature is a great teacher.