The Pocket and the Pendant

Aeonite (Michael Fiegel) writes "Mark Jeffrey is probably best known to Slashdotters as an online media entrepreneur and one of the co-founders (along with Mike Maerz and Jim Bumgardner) of The Palace, an avatar-based chat system popular in the late 1990s. Jeffrey is not to be confused with Neal Stephenson, though both men have websites featuring clockwork imagery, goatees, and novels which contain references to Sumerian mythology -- Stephenson's Snow Crash and Jeffrey's first novel, The Pocket and the Pendant. From a distance, one might be inclined to believe that similarities to Stephenson's own work are more than cosmetic: Jeffrey thanks Stephenson on the Acknowledgments page of his novel (along with Stephen R. Donaldson and Carl Jung, among others), and one Lulu.com review (mentioned in a press release) describes The Pocket and the Pendant as being 'like Stargate, Harry Potter, Snow Crash and the old Land of the Lost rolled into one.'" Read on for the rest of Fiegel's review. The Pocket and the Pendant author Mark Jeffrey pages 220 publisher Lulu.com rating 5 reviewer Michael Fiegel ISBN 1411613236 summary In a world where time has no meaning, one boy stands alone against the forces of darkness.

In my estimation, that's a lot like saying that chocolate chip cookies are "like flour, sugar, chocolate chips and vanilla rolled into one." Both statements are true, in part, though they leave out a lot of other ingredients, and mention some (Snow Crash and vanilla, respectively) which proportionally make up very little of the overall batter.

Granted, I know what the reviewer was thinking of when they wrote that assessment of the book; namely, the Sumerian myth. But beyond that, it's misleading to suggest that a Snow Crash fan would also enjoy The Pocket and the Pendant. I'd go so far as to say quite the opposite. Snow Crash was a Cyberpunk novel loaded with heavy doses of socio-political and religious satire, violence and sexual imagery, among other things. The Pocket and the Pendant is a fantasy novel that contains no overt satire, little violence outside of a few bruises, and nothing sexier than the word "girlfriend." To draw comparison between the two is akin to comparing Star Trek and Star Wars: about all they have in common is stars. One is science-fiction, the other's science-fantasy; one takes place in the future, the other "long, long ago"; one's got Wil Wheaton, the other's got Natalie Portman; one's designed for adults (Seven of Nine, the Borg), and one's focused on a younger audience (Jar-Jar Binks, the Ewoks).

Given that dichotomy, The Pocket and the Pendant falls squarely in the Star Wars/fantasy half of the speculative fiction genre. As a longtime fan of Star Wars, I can't say that's a bad thing. There's much that's good about this book, and as a first novel it shines far brighter than many works I've laid eyes on. However, there are some uneven spots that must be acknowledged along the way.

Humble Beginnings

After a brief prelude which sets up the action to follow we are introduced to the novel's protagonist, Max Quick. Max is introduced as being "a very strange little boy," a phrase that bothered me the first time I read it. As we will learn just a few dozen words later, Max is twelve years old, as are his peers, who are also, time and again, referred to as "little boys and girls." When I think of someone who's a "little boy" I think of the teenage Amidala in The Phantom Menace calling the 8-year-old Anakin "a funny little boy." I do not think of twelve-year-olds as "little children," but rather as pre-teens well on the way to adulthood: Natalie Portman's Matilda in Leon, who is twelve going on 32; Nabokov's twelve-year old Lolita, four-feet-ten in one sock; the drug-using pre-teens and barely-teens in Kids and Thirteen.

In the world of The Pocket and the Pendant, however, twelve-year-olds truly are "little boys and girls," possessed of a wide-eyed innocence that, while capable of being tainted and turned, is nevertheless omnipresent in the mannerisms and language of the main characters. Mention of "girlfriends" causes blushing, and one twelve-year-old character uses the term "tummy" and repeatedly refers to her mother as "Mommy." Consider the following dialogue:

" Can you hear me?"
"Yes!" came the little girl's voice from somewhere above, now sounding more hopeful. "Oh, yes! Whoever you are, can you help me, please?"
"Yes, I will, I promise," Max called back. "What apartment are you in?"
"912," she yelled back, "The door's open! Hurry! I'm scared!"

The only child in the book who's portrayed as truly malicious and evil is Ace, described as a "big kid" by the author in a clear effort to put at least several years between him and the "little twelve-year-olds." While it's true that there are some young antagonists who have reverted to barbarity, even their actions seem more like a foolish game than true maliciousness, bringing to mind scenes from Lord of the Flies or Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome or even Peter Pan, kids turned savage not by choice, but by circumstance. Sasha, one of the most vicious-tongued of these savage "Serpents & Mermaids," even joins the other "good little children" on their quest after a time.

In all, there are four heroes in the novel, all presumably in the same age range, all "just four little kids" as described by our hero, Max Quick, himself. He's accompanied by Casey Cole, his female sidekick (and not his girlfriend, as he insists); Ian Keating, a British transplant, here playing the role of Spock to Quick's Kirk; and, of course, Sasha, who comes in late and serves mostly as a plot device, conveniently tripping or falling into trouble when necessary. As to the plot ...

All The Time In The World

The action begins for our heroes as it ends for everyone else on the planet: on April 9th at 3:38, in the middle of a solar eclipse. That's the moment at which time itself stops. Mothers are frozen in the middle of making breakfast, fathers are paralyzed as they drive to work, and children are stuck fast as they head home not to play GTA San Andreas, but to eat lemon and jelly sandwiches and play hide-and-seek (for such is the world of Max Quick). In fact, it's not just people who are affected, but presumably the entire universe itself: the wind stops blowing, flocks of birds halt in mid-flight, and waves become frozen on the ocean, each immobile and essentially as hard as stone.

As it turns out, not everyone is stuck in time. There's Max, of course, who quickly discovers that while the rest of the world is stopped, he has gained respectively supernatural powers, able to "whoosh" about with great speed and hear across great distances since everything else in the world has fallen silent and still. He soon rescues Casey, who has discovered two powers: first, the ability to "fall inside" mirrors in order to escape from danger; and second, the ability to rub objects to "heat them up" and unfreeze them from time. This discovery leads to one of the more unintentionally amusing lines in the book if you're an adult:

Everything seems to be like that: slow and sticky -- but I figured it out: if you rub it and heat it up, it comes loose and then you can use it." She beamed.

The unwitting double-entendre there makes me question the assessment that The Pocket and the Pendant is "a fast-paced adventure sure to thrill young and old alike." Clearly, the author intends this line to be read from the perspective of an innocent child, discovering a secret and describing it in perfectly obvious and appropriate terms, but I think it is likely that only a child (or "young adult," as the library likes to call them) will be able to take that at face value. But on with the story...

Max and Sasha, in an attempt to uncover the mystery behind the stopped time, soon encounter a rogue band of youth gone wild, which leads to a very clever battle set inside a time-stopped bank of fog, and the eventual capture of our heroes. Luckily, they discover a disgruntled member of the gang (Ian) who is able to help them escape via a magical book-cum-"deus-ex-machina". At first, it seems strange that the novel interjects a magical tome into what had previously been a more science-oriented storyline, and stranger still that the characters all seem to just accept this magical object at face value. But as the plot unfolds, this becomes more acceptable to the reader; as we discover, not only is there a reason for magic and science to exist side-by-side within the story, but there's a reason why the main character seems capable of embracing it all without questioning it.

As the story evolves, we encounter more quantum-bending books, a Nam-shub (Sumerian incantation), UFOs, an entire army of alien centurions, and an insidious plot that involves a rogue planet, ancient Egyptian and Sumerian "gods" and the interference of Snow Crash's favorite god, Enki, one of the novel's most interesting characters despite the fact that he (and, perhaps, the author) seems to believe that all the world's problems can be solved by giving troubled children a bowl of ice cream (this happens three times in the course of the novel).

Enki gets some of the more interesting (and some of the more adult) dialogue in the novel, though I hesitate to use the term "dialogue" since it's mostly "monologue." Enki is not alone, however. Heroes, villains, diary entries and side characters all spout off great gouts of plot for pages and pages, at times explaining backstory, at other times (as with Enki) seeming to speak the author's own philosophical beliefs as they attempt to justify thousands of years of history, archaeology, religion and philosophy in one neat little storyline. One entire chapter is devoted to Enki's reconciliation of Sumerian mythology and Biblical references to Adam, the Nephilim, the Flood, Babel and the Serpent in the Garden of Eden. Not that it's done poorly here; on the contrary, it's done as tidily as Stephenson does in Snow Crash (which is to say, solidly enough to serve the plot, but probably not enough to stand up to actual scrutiny in the "real world"). Surely the RIAA would disagree, however, with Ian's concise assessment that good and evil are akin to users who share on P2P networks, and those who do not (respectively).

The Pocket and the Pendant

As Enki explains to our heroes, "The Pocket" of the title is the little "pocket of time" within which the characters find themselves through the course of the novel. To reveal more about the nature of this "pocket" is to spoil parts of the story, but suffice to say that it goes far deeper than your typical "time has stopped" trope, and involves weaving the concept of neural networks, the nature of consciousness and quantum mechanics into what Enki dubs "Dreamtime."

Various objects called omphalos -- special amethysts, diamonds, rubies, lapis lazuli, emeralds, etc. -- "contain echoes of the very Dreamtime itself", allowing users to alter reality in various ways. Some omphalos are used to allow users to travel faster, others to communicate across great distances. "The Pocket" was created by an omphalos called the Chrononomicon, and "The Pendant" is another omphalos which the novel's villains are searching for within "The Pocket." It has the capability of affecting the entire human race, and whether or not they can be stopped before achieving their goal is ultimately on the shoulders of Max Quick and his three friends. If the heroes succeed, the world will be saved from evil. If they fail, all humankind will be enslaved, just like the band Planet Furious, who are, late in the book, "thawed out" and forced to perform onstage for an army of villains in what has to be one of the silliest scenes in the novel.

Not that there's anything particularly wrong with "silly" in a children's book. Scenes like this are bound to capture the imagination of younger readers. But adult readers are going to have a hard time grasping the relevance of "Johnny Jupiter, Sophisto, Frankie Mercury and Sid Venus" in a novel which, pages earlier, was going on about quantum mechanics and the nature of reality.

Who's The Audience?

This issue is addressed in this review over and over again, precisely because of the author's apparent intent:

"The novel is written for both adults and young adult readers alike," says Jeffrey in a press release about the novel. "I consciously wrote in a fast-paced and humorous style accessible to both audiences, yet didn't want to create something 'kiddie'.

All told, before the book is out, we'll have encountered references to ancient Sumeria, Judeo-Christian mythology, quantum physics, time travel and astronomy -- heavy, weighty topics that will probably fly over the heads of many children reading the book. We'll also have encountered children calling each other names, characters who speak in "kiddie" language to one another, a "Beep-o-tronik" cell phone and a "Vicious Cycles 'Sportstervarius' motorcycle." These two things -- adult language, and childish language -- exist not together, but side by side, separate and noticeably unequal. Consider the following, from page 180 and 181, respectively:

It was the same kind of feeling one got looking at an Escher print. It was numinous, chthonic.
The gestalt was one of controlled geometric chaos -- triangular, dodecahedral, octagonal and tetrahedral shapes in every direction.

"...I forgive you." She paused a moment and then added, "I even forgive you for what will happen to my Mommy."

The novel certainly has pieces that are appropriate for older readers, and it definitely has pieces that are intended for younger readers, but I am hard pressed to say that it can appeal as a whole to either group. Due to the nature of the story and the fact that the protagonists are children, my gut instinct is to suggest it's definitely a children's book. I can see a child enjoying the book much more easily than I can see an adult finding it all fulfilling. Slashdot is mentioned on page 67, but I don't think the typical Slashdot reader would find the novel really and truly fulfilling. However, their children probably would, especially if mom or dad was there to explain what "numinous" or "chthonic" meant.

This is not to say that adults cannot enjoy such novels. Many a children's novel has been embraced by adults: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, A Wrinkle In Time and The Hobbit spring immediately to mind, and of course there's the ubiquitous Harry Potter and much of Piers Anthony's work, especially the oft-forgotten Mode books. Such novels contain worlds where youthful innocence is threatened on the path toward experience, and children (or hobbits) are forced to grow up faster than they might like in order to save themselves and others. The Pocket and the Pendant is at home with these books, not with Stargate or Snow Crash. And that's good company to be in.

Nuts & Bolts

It's worth mentioning the book's layout, at least in passing. The number of lines varies from page-to-page, with some pages leaving a more comfortable 1/8" white gap above the rule at the bottom, and others cramming an extra line in there, seemingly at random, but likely due to the somewhat inconsistent spacing between sections within each chapter, some of which are quite wide, others narrower. Rather than being fully-justified (with even edges on both sides), the book is merely left-justified, with ragged right edges. While not a mortal sin, it's at least venial, making the text hard to read in some places where words sorely in need of hyphenation are instead dropped to a new line:

For his part, Max was surprised to find that there was something disturbingly
familiar about Mr. Siren also. Then, Max caught a flash, a snippet
of...something. He blinked in confusion and tried to concentrate.

From a stylistic standpoint, one annoyance is that the novel's main villain has a habit of speaking in pseudo-archaic English, with "thee," "thou" and "thy" peppering her speech, presumably in an effort to make her seem older and more alien. While I would normally consider this as egregious a sin as George Lucas burdening Jar-Jar Binks with Jamaican patois, I will let Jeffrey off the hook here since he has one of the characters question this very issue late in the novel, in a rather amusing scene.

Far worse, however is the author's unfortunate habit of liberally sprinkling his text with italics for emphasis. I cannot find a single page in the book that does not contain at least one or two italicized words. In general, one uses italics as a means of emphasis only sparingly, and the overuse in this novel leaves the reader a bit seasick, riding a roller-coaster of emphasized words up and down, up and down. Much of the time, one can chalk this up to the gushing exuberance of an excited speaker, but at times, such emphasis seems wholly out of place within the context of a given sentence:

Oh, it is you, I knew it was," she said, shaking her head. "But how can it be? I don't understand ... but I have no doubt: it's you alright."

Overall the book is well-edited, with only a handful of typos to be found throughout. One of the most amusing, repeated twice, is to be found on page 201 near the end of the novel, where a character unfortunately serves ice cream not in "bowls" but in "bowels." That's one your kids might actually notice, and laugh uproariously at.

Unintentional potty humor -- some things are funny no matter how old you are.

In Closing

For those who enjoy many of the other books mentioned above, The Pocket and the Pendant is a good, fun read. However, it's hard to get past the notable imbalance between the book's "adult" and "kiddie" elements. It will be interesting to see where the author takes his characters should he write a sequel to this novel, and if he's able to more thoroughly blend the weightier language with a consistently child-friendly storyline.

The best advice for those who are unsure of whether or not this is for them is to check it out themselves. A free preview of this novel, including the first two chapters, is available in .pdf format for immediate download from print-on-demand-publisher Lulu.com and www.pocketandpendant.com. The P&P website also includes cover art, news and updates about the book, a blog, and several other reviews.

You can purchase the Pocket and the Pendant from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.