Look Into the Sun

Look into the Sun is an expansion of an earlier short story. A human architect who does rather ambitious work is desired by a group of aliens to do a job for them. This involves leaving his family, and a lot of physical and mental changes, along with getting stuck in the middle of at times incomprehensible alien politics. A decent book, overall. 3.5 out of 5

This is a great book. I loved it. James Patrick Kelly has written a book that's facinating. How do I know this? I met James Patrick Kelly and had him autograph my copies of Look Into The Sun and Planet of Whispers. This is the storyof Philip Wing, an architect who'd built the New Wonder of the World. However, the aliens who'd provided the technology, the Messengers, have returned to Earth with anew message of "religious" significance. It saps the humanaggressiveness and Philip loses his wife, Daisy, to the Messengers. In the process, he meets Haruman, a Chani,from a planet around 82 Eridani. When he loses Daisy to the Messengers, he turns to Harumen.

The conventional wisdom about Jim Kelly is that he's first and foremost a master of short fiction, but this terrific novel argues otherwise. One of the rare novels about a creative artist in which we are actually shown, not just told about, the work of art being created -- not just Kelly's character but Kelly himself has solved the problem of devising a suitable tomb for a goddess! I read the first half of this a bit at a time, finding it engaging and thought-provoking but not compelling. Little did I know that Kelly was just putting his many plot pieces on the chessboard; I read the second half in one sitting.