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A review by tykewriter
Letters From The Light by Shel Calopa
4.0
ONE of the perks of being published with Inspired Quill (IQ) is the free access it grants us to the works of our fellow authors, so when Shel Calopa's Letters from the Light hit the digital shelves, I was sufficiently intrigued to snap up a Kindle copy all to myself.
Consider that a necessary disclosure for the sake of transparency, then: yes, I'm also an IQ author, and, yes, I took advantage of a freebie for my reading pleasures, but that's as far as it goes. No favours, or indeed favouritism, just because we're stablemates.
So, with that said, what of the Australian author's debut novel? Happily, it more than lived up to that initial piqued curiosity that first inspired me to take the plunge.
Letters from the Light is a dystopian science fiction tale. As such, being an author of dystopias myself, it was perhaps almost bound to snatch my attention, but it has an intriguing premise all of its own that really clinched it for me.
Calopa presents us with a tale of light and dark, but not in the sense of good and evil; well, not in any classic supernatural sense at least. No, this is a story of privileged elites and the underdogs toiling to keep the ruling caste in the luxury it takes for granted.
On the face of it, this social order is preserved by a caste of priests and their nun-like counterparts, but a corrosive cocktail of ancient secrets, political intrigue, the emergence of subversive myths and legends, is combining to corrode the pyramid from within.
The 'proles', forced to live in darkness, are becoming discontented. There's more to this society than meets the eye, of course. But things are changing.
Light is a precious resource, quite literally, in this far-future rendition of Australia. Wealth and status are bound to one's access to illumination. The elite bask in it, and never know the gloom of night except on special ceremonial occasions; the poor must stumble in the gloom, while the very poorest endure utter darkness underground.
In a horrible twist of Calopa's pen, these latter wretches are bound to their station – kept ignorant of their lightless conditions – in a truly cruel manner. Though, of course, those culpable justify it as humane; such is the banality of human hypocrisy.
Calopa doesn't judge; instead she leaves that to we, the readers, but I guess you could say she leads us on with plentiful testimony. Her writing brings this world to life in rich detail. That's true in terms of its physical settings and in its depiction of the ways that life and society is conducted, both in the light and the dark places.
She demonstrates the casual entitlement of the privileged to their well-lit ways, along with the dulled acceptance of those cast into shadow, in ways that often got my teeth grinding at the injustice of it all.
But don't expect a neat delineation between the 'good' and the 'bad' in this story. The heroes and villains in Calopa's novel are drawn from all stations; they inherited their place in this world, in more ways than one, and like any of us here in the real world, they can only make the most of the hand they are dealt. Would we conduct ourselves any better in their shoes?
Beyond this bitter ‘socio-luminarchy', the story presents us with a gloriously strange combination of elements. A despoiled Earth has long-since been abandoned by humanity, as it spread to the stars only to face catastrophe at the height of its prowess. An immortal Australian oligarch, imprisoned at the core of a planetoid orbiting a distant star for crimes against humanity, is pursuing his own machinations against his AI companion turned jailer. In deep space, a human-crewed starship nears the end of a century-long search...
For what? You'll have to read the book to discover how these disparate elements intersect. It's difficult to say much more without risk of spoilers. Suffice to say, Calopa has delivered the goods.
Letter from the Light is an allegory for our times, a morality tale of enlightenment and redemption; an example of how those who dwell in light can – as if it really needs saying – be blind perpetrators of the most dreadful darkness. Above all, Calopa's novel offers an inventive excursion into the human condition.
Consider that a necessary disclosure for the sake of transparency, then: yes, I'm also an IQ author, and, yes, I took advantage of a freebie for my reading pleasures, but that's as far as it goes. No favours, or indeed favouritism, just because we're stablemates.
So, with that said, what of the Australian author's debut novel? Happily, it more than lived up to that initial piqued curiosity that first inspired me to take the plunge.
Letters from the Light is a dystopian science fiction tale. As such, being an author of dystopias myself, it was perhaps almost bound to snatch my attention, but it has an intriguing premise all of its own that really clinched it for me.
Calopa presents us with a tale of light and dark, but not in the sense of good and evil; well, not in any classic supernatural sense at least. No, this is a story of privileged elites and the underdogs toiling to keep the ruling caste in the luxury it takes for granted.
On the face of it, this social order is preserved by a caste of priests and their nun-like counterparts, but a corrosive cocktail of ancient secrets, political intrigue, the emergence of subversive myths and legends, is combining to corrode the pyramid from within.
The 'proles', forced to live in darkness, are becoming discontented. There's more to this society than meets the eye, of course. But things are changing.
Light is a precious resource, quite literally, in this far-future rendition of Australia. Wealth and status are bound to one's access to illumination. The elite bask in it, and never know the gloom of night except on special ceremonial occasions; the poor must stumble in the gloom, while the very poorest endure utter darkness underground.
In a horrible twist of Calopa's pen, these latter wretches are bound to their station – kept ignorant of their lightless conditions – in a truly cruel manner. Though, of course, those culpable justify it as humane; such is the banality of human hypocrisy.
Calopa doesn't judge; instead she leaves that to we, the readers, but I guess you could say she leads us on with plentiful testimony. Her writing brings this world to life in rich detail. That's true in terms of its physical settings and in its depiction of the ways that life and society is conducted, both in the light and the dark places.
She demonstrates the casual entitlement of the privileged to their well-lit ways, along with the dulled acceptance of those cast into shadow, in ways that often got my teeth grinding at the injustice of it all.
But don't expect a neat delineation between the 'good' and the 'bad' in this story. The heroes and villains in Calopa's novel are drawn from all stations; they inherited their place in this world, in more ways than one, and like any of us here in the real world, they can only make the most of the hand they are dealt. Would we conduct ourselves any better in their shoes?
Beyond this bitter ‘socio-luminarchy', the story presents us with a gloriously strange combination of elements. A despoiled Earth has long-since been abandoned by humanity, as it spread to the stars only to face catastrophe at the height of its prowess. An immortal Australian oligarch, imprisoned at the core of a planetoid orbiting a distant star for crimes against humanity, is pursuing his own machinations against his AI companion turned jailer. In deep space, a human-crewed starship nears the end of a century-long search...
For what? You'll have to read the book to discover how these disparate elements intersect. It's difficult to say much more without risk of spoilers. Suffice to say, Calopa has delivered the goods.
Letter from the Light is an allegory for our times, a morality tale of enlightenment and redemption; an example of how those who dwell in light can – as if it really needs saying – be blind perpetrators of the most dreadful darkness. Above all, Calopa's novel offers an inventive excursion into the human condition.