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Sam Dalton is a man with a problem. Having recently lost his
wife to a mysterious hit and run driver he must face the loss
of his daughter, Jessica, to an unknown disease which is slowly
shutting down each of her organs. With no hope in sight from
science Sam is, unexpectedly, given a chance to save his daughter's
life and there is only one catch. Sam must kill seven people
in different ways over seven days and feed the harvested organs
to his daughter. With his daughter having less than a month
to live can Sam overcome his fear and do what needs to be
done...?
More
Than Life Itself is a new novella by Joseph Nassise. The
book reads like an old episode of Night Gallery. We
know that the tale will contain a twist and part of the fun
is working out if you can guess what that twist is - I had
two on the go. The first was that in some way he becomes responsible
for his wife's death in the car crash, thereby being forced
to choose between her continued existence and his daughter's.
Cross off number one, turns out, I was wrong. Number two,
however, was spot on. I won't tell you what it was but if
you think about old episodes of The Twilight Zone or
Night Gallery you should have pretty much worked it
out by the time he reads the mysterious book that the stranger
gives him.
It's not a badly written story and should while away a spare
hour. Obviously, because of the shortness of the story characterisation
is bound to suffer. Sam turns from dotting father to rampant
killer in a very short period and it's difficult to quite
believe that he would have taken such a drastic road. The
other characters are little more that ciphers placed there
to drive the narrative forward.
One
of the things which spoilt this story for me was the apparent
ignorance of Sam. One of the organs that he has to harvest
from a victim is a kidney. Admit it someone says kidney to
you and the shape kind of pops into your mind, not so with
Sam:
"Sam's
knowledge of anatomy was limited; while he could probably
find the heart or the lungs, telling the difference between
a liver and a kidney would be difficult without more research."
Even,
if he had never visited a butcher and had the greatest luck
with his health a kidney is kidney shaped, like a kidney dish,
a kidney shaped pool or even a kidney bean. It makes you wonder
what was going through Sam's head when the doctors where explaining
that his daughters kidneys had packed in. From this premise
the reader could add any shape of organ in any place, while
the tumbleweed rolls behind Sam's eyes as he searches for
the pertinent question he knows he should be asking at that
point.
Another
problem with the book is the price; if bangs per buck are
an important factor then I'm not sure that More Than Life
represents good value. As I sit and type I have three books
from independent publishers in front of me Triquorum One
from Pendragon Press, which is a collection of three novella's
running at one hundred and twenty-five pages and costs £5.99,
The ever excellent The
Ephemera, a collection of short stories by
Neil
Williamson running to two hundred and seventeen
pages for £5.99 and More than Life which runs at sixty-six
pages for the staggering amount of £7.99. I know that this
isn't a factor controlled by the author but by the publisher
Telos Publishing, but I can't see it encouraging anyone to
pull it off the shelves when you can get so much more for
less.
So
not a bad read, but a little short with a few plot holes that
just might spoil your fun.
Charles
Packer
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