Nicoji

by M. Shayne Bell

Book Overview

there comes a time when you just have to make a stand This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0671720341
• ISBN13: 9780671720346
• Release Date: December 1990
• Publisher: Baen Books
• Length: 243 Pages
• Weight: 0.20 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Superb!

This is a great book that I read several years ago. Really sucked me in. I recommend this book to all. Having never heard of this author before, I took a chance and am glad that I did. M. Shayne Bell's style is very readable and well composed. With the knowledge that he is mostly a writer of short fiction, poems, essays, and articles (that I have not read), I found his only novel to be a completely engrossing and fully realized universe. Enchanting characters, and a completely unique storyline kept me enthralled from beginning to end. One of the few books that I simply HAD to read from start to finish without pause. M. Shayne Bell has created an intriguing future that will enthrall veteran sci-fi readers as well as casual ones.

Unique, lyrical, powerful science fiction from Idaho

Nicoji is very interesting and very literary fiction, by an author well-versed in mainstream fiction and literary criticism. Nicoji combines a contemporary author's realistic characters and themes with a compelling, completely unique alien environment. The newly inhabited planet that Jake and Sam travel through by raft is the primary "antagonist." The planet is so richly described and so densely populated with bizarre but believable wildlife that it becomes almost a character itself, second only to Jake in the level to which it is explored and developed. Jake's struggle to survive in the planet's living, unforgiving ecosystem form the primary source of conflict in the novel. Yet the protection of that selfsame environment and its native species becomes a need, even a sort of salvation, for Jake. A distinctly Western American environmental ethic is evidenced -- but subtly, surprisingly, without manipulation. This humanistic deep ecology, combined with the novel's deeply embedded Christian undercurrent make the understated outlook of Nicoji a sort of hybrid philosophy -- C.S. Lewis crossed with Terry Tempest Williams. Surface similarities to Huckleberry Finn were mentioned earlier, but "The Wizard of Oz" (based on Baum's children's novel) is actually evoked more than Twain. Dorothy, Toto and ruby slippers are literally the specific subjects of Sam and Jake's poison-induced hallucinations. This is a tip-of-the-hat by Bell to the way in which Nicoji touches on the two complimentary yet contradictory themes of "Follow the Yellow Brick Road to the Glorious Wizard" and "There's No Place Like Home." Sam and Jake's journey is also likened to that taken by their Swiss pioneer ancestors on their way to find Zion in the American West. In the end, Sam, Jake, and the indigenous help have all "found Zion," but in ways completely different than they had hoped.