“King of the Worlds”
M. Thomas Gammarino
Chin Music Press, $24.50
Middle-age discontent is not confined to the planet Earth in M. Thomas Gammarino’s interstellar novel “King of the Worlds.”
Dylan Greenyears is an Earth “exopat” living in New Taiwan, teaching Shakespeare to alien high-schoolers and avoiding his wife and children as much as possible.
“After a couple of years of living and working among the host culture, he’d finally understood, intellectually and viscerally, that life on other planets was just life,” Gammarino writes.
As a younger man back on Earth, Dylan was a Hollywood heartthrob after starring in an off-color sequel to “E.T.” But on New Taiwan, conventional domesticity and the disappointing discovery that the galaxy doesn’t revolve around him lead him to seek respite in some old fan letters.
Responding to the letters brings some close encounters of the crazy kind with an array of alien characters, unstable fangirls, Mormon fundamentalists, alternate versions of himself, ex-girlfriends and a sentient supercomputer with a God complex called Omni.
Despite his narcissism and cynicism, Dylan is so painfully sincere that the reader feels obligated to root for him in his misguided quest.
If Kurt Vonnegut and Douglas Adams had a baby, it would look a lot like “King of the Worlds.” With its tongue-in-cheek humor and intelligent allusions, this is the kind of fiction that playfully reassembles tropes and rejects all labels. It’s a dark riot.
“The Healers”
Kimo Armitage
University of Hawai‘i Press, $16.99
In “The Healers,” children’s book author and playwright Kimo Armitage brings his storytelling talent to a young adult audience in a voice that should appeal to older audiences, as well.
Armitage writes with an elegant narrative style that celebrates the rhythm and syntax of Hawaiian chants and myths.
The book is told from the perspective of multiple narrators in various time periods and generations of one family. “The Healers” juxtaposes elements of ancient Hawaiian culture — in which nature, man and spirit coexist seamlessly — with contemporary disconnectedness and erosion of resources.
The story centers on Keola and Pua, who are cousins born with extraordinary gifts and a unique closeness.
As apprentices, they train with their grandmother by foraging for plants and exploring the healing properties of everything they gather. They learn how to care for both the land and the people of their community.
Prophetic dreams and mysterious strangers eventually separate the cousins. Later, when the lives of friends and family are at risk, Keola and Pua reconnect and look to the past to navigate their present.
A vibrant portrayal of the Native Hawaiian mythos in the past, present and hopeful future, “The Healers” shows us that the bonds of ohana can cross time and space and that our ties to the land and one another are eternal.
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M. Thomas Gammarino and Kimo Armitage are scheduled to appear at the Hawai‘i Book & Music Festival. See info box above.
