Book Review - Waking Lazarus by T. L. Hines
Category Book Reviews
One of the last "recreational reads" I had on my shelf was the debut novel by T. L Hines titled Waking Lazarus. I heard about it during the writing process, and quickly put myself on the hold list at the library. It was well worth the wait...
Jude Allman has lived a number of lives... literally. He's died three times and come back to life after all efforts to resuscitate him were abandoned. You do that often enough, and you become quite a celebrity. But Allman didn't want that. In fact, he moved away, changed his name, and developed some rather strange psychotic behavior. He also fathered a child during a one-night stand, but he's never been able to be there for the kid. His self-imposed isolation starts to crumble when a woman shows up at his door, asking about his purpose after having died so many times. While he wants to just get rid of her, things start to change. He begins to experience an unusual ability to foresee death around him, and can visualize the process by touching the person. The mother of his child wants to chalk it up to seizures, but the fact remains that the foreshadowings are accurate. This coincides with a string of child kidnappings that are occurring in the local area, and Allman has to use his new-found powers in solving this mystery when it's his kid who's been taken. This is a position and power he doesn't want, but he now has little choice but to exercise its use...
For a debut novel, this is very well done. Any book that starts off with "The first time Jude Allman died, he was eight years old." is enough to catch your interest, and Hines doesn't give you much chance to put the book down after that. The interplay between his mental illness and his desire to be a real father to his child is an interesting conflict, and you can understand why he'd want to just make it all go away (both reality and his constructed existence). And while I thought I had the plot figured out a number of times, it turns out that things took off in a direction I didn't expect...
An entertaining read that engaged my mind a bit more than usual...
One of the last "recreational reads" I had on my shelf was the debut novel by T. L Hines titled Waking Lazarus. I heard about it during the writing process, and quickly put myself on the hold list at the library. It was well worth the wait...
Jude Allman has lived a number of lives... literally. He's died three times and come back to life after all efforts to resuscitate him were abandoned. You do that often enough, and you become quite a celebrity. But Allman didn't want that. In fact, he moved away, changed his name, and developed some rather strange psychotic behavior. He also fathered a child during a one-night stand, but he's never been able to be there for the kid. His self-imposed isolation starts to crumble when a woman shows up at his door, asking about his purpose after having died so many times. While he wants to just get rid of her, things start to change. He begins to experience an unusual ability to foresee death around him, and can visualize the process by touching the person. The mother of his child wants to chalk it up to seizures, but the fact remains that the foreshadowings are accurate. This coincides with a string of child kidnappings that are occurring in the local area, and Allman has to use his new-found powers in solving this mystery when it's his kid who's been taken. This is a position and power he doesn't want, but he now has little choice but to exercise its use...
For a debut novel, this is very well done. Any book that starts off with "The first time Jude Allman died, he was eight years old." is enough to catch your interest, and Hines doesn't give you much chance to put the book down after that. The interplay between his mental illness and his desire to be a real father to his child is an interesting conflict, and you can understand why he'd want to just make it all go away (both reality and his constructed existence). And while I thought I had the plot figured out a number of times, it turns out that things took off in a direction I didn't expect...
An entertaining read that engaged my mind a bit more than usual...
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