Death's Dominion: Simon Clark

Set in a future in which Death has been defeated by the mysterious chemical cocktail, Lazarite, Death’s Dominion follows a band of escapees from a Transit Station where those transitioning, Transients, from Death to second life during their flight from a massacre. For unknown reasons the army has descended setting the facility to the torch; the only one inferred is the age old tradition of humanity, if something is not understood, Ridicule it or Destroy it.

Docile, servile, and defenseless servants of mankind, the band rallies around one of their kind who is an apparent aberration. As sheep they follow the divine madness of one called Dominion, and one by one, they are forced to re-evaluate the laws and taboos of their existence.

An already overused description of this book is a blend of Asimov’s Robot stories and Mary Shelley. There are other fragments of ideas from fantasy, horror, & history intricately woven into this Frankenstein of a tale. Much like the original Pygmalion upon which Frankenstein is based, the book starts with much promise, yet as it progresses, seems to turn into a nightmare for the author.

Simon Clark is obviously talented and his promise shows in this attempt to bring several themes together. If this review were written after my only reading half the book, I would be downright bubbly over the mystery, the promise of passion, and the possibilities of marvelous revelation. Instead, the plot falls very flat, the promise of revelation unfulfilled. While the cast of characters in this fiction may be brought back from the dead, the reality is their development was as dead as the pages I turned.

At some point, perhaps when he trapped his party in a castle, it felt to me as though he lost focus of the story. I have read in interviews with other authors they have experienced a story taking on a life of its own; going in directions they did not expect. This one took on a death of its own.

Gone was the promise of the “singing of the dead”, perhaps the occurrence of nine escapees meeting up at a stone circle comprised of nine stones was merely coincidence, but he goes a step further into what for me is a cardinal sin for an ending. Deus ex machina might be used during a story to further a plot, suspend belief for a moment to advance an idea, but to make the ending such is, in my opinion, laziness on the part of an author. The feeble grasping of political straws, Israel-Palestine, United States-Native American relations, holocaust, slavery and economic depression come too late and disjointedly to make any adhering contribution to the meat of the storyline. Far too convenient and easy an ending, as if Mr. Clark, in seeing the un-death his storyline had taken on its own, saw no other way to save the visions promised so poignantly in the beginning of the book. Instead of expanding his visions, increasing the scope and breadth of his story, or reining it in, forcing it back to his original vision, it ends. While there is an epilogue, it has the feel of being there only because in ending where he did, the book was short a contracted number of words.

In the beginning I liked this book. I had heard good things about the author. Perhaps I recall too well authors of a bygone era, Clarke, Heinlein, Van Vogt, and Asimov who wove political and social commentary into the fabric of their stories until they took on a life of their own. Simon Clark has promise, that much is evident. All the others mentioned had missteps in their literary journeys, and maybe this is one for Simon Clark.

For his potential more than this book, I rate Death’s Dominion with 2 stars.
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Publisher: Leisure (October 31, 2006)
ISBN-10: 0843954930
ISBN-13: 978-0843954937
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