Pagan Tama
The Polyverse: Beneath the Pleasure Zone II, Paul Green
In a post-apocalyptic London, a part-spiritual, part-technological conflict arises, with warring religious factions (Pagans, Christians and Muslims) fighting within a backdrop of metaphysical virtual reality that threatens to overpower all….
At least that’s what I think this novel is about. In fairness, it’s actually a sequel to a book I haven’t read (The Rupture), so I knew nothing about the characters or the plot before reading The Polyverse. While there is a brief introduction at the beginning the recaps the action from The Rupture, this didn’t actually help me much in following the plot of The Polyverse. Perhaps if I’d read The Rupture beforehand, I might have understood The Polyverse a little more, but I’m not entirely confident about that.
Reading The Polyverse is like trying to watch and understand the Architect scene from the second Matrix movie while simultaneously listening to Goa trance. It blends Pagan spirituality, the occult and metaphysics with cyberpunk (there’s a scene where a character literally makes a statue of Thoth out of spare tech parts), and it is extremely loaded with technobabble. While there are plenty of interesting ideas and imagery (such as the mixing of pagan ritual with virtual reality), a lot of it gets lost in the impenetrable language. But then cryptic prose and trippy, erratic plots are something of a tradition in the cyberpunk genre; think Neuromancer.
If you like the weird, baffling merging of spirituality and philosophy with technology in the Matrix sequels, or the surreal fantasy/sci-fi blends in novels like Geoff Ryman’s The Child Garden or Rachel Pollack’s Unquenchable Fire, you might find The Polyverse of interest.
All product images from Amazon.co.uk
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