After finishing the last page of Transubstantiate, I feel as if I’ve only grasped the beginning, the most obvious character traits, and just a bit of their backstory. I feel as if I watched it all through a foggy mirror and I desperately want to clean the glass and look again. Call it morbid fascination. Their world is chaos, nothing is real, or nothing is illusion. Prisons are experiments, ones that can be the last hope of humanity, but the puppeteer…I’m not sure if he’s good or bad, or even human. This world is a mess, people play parts, other people allow their most basic id out to play, of course the nuclear fallout rearranging genomes certainly didn’t help. But what of that enlightened puppeteer? Is he God? One of God’s fallen angels? The Devil? A demon? Or just an evolved humanoid? The story demands a re-look, one that I will gladly and eagerly visit again.

The story centers on six individuals. Each portion of a chapter is written in their own point of view. Some chapters are from the past, others just written correspondence, so it’s important to pay attention to the dates, those pre- and post-apocalyptic. The real gem behind each character is the fact that the more you learn about them, the more you aren’t sure that they are entirely good or even worthy of being a part of the last remnants of humanity. Each one is psychologically disturbed, even the elusive X (puppeteer). But the POVs are incredible and give the reader an insight in to what type of insanity they have. The calculated gestures, gasps and sighs, or the cold bloodied neck snaps and shanking - all were beautifully written and crafted with clever lunacy.

At times, I didn’t understand what was going on. Who was the man/group/individual behind Gordon’s chip implant? Why were directions and orders scrawled across a computer screen beneath eyelids? Why was the chipmunk still sentient and alive? There is a deeper story, a deeper meaning behind his writing, and even if you don’t fully understand it, you can feel its malice and foreshadowing, recognize its twisted brilliance, and find yourself thinking more and more about the characters and plot. I can’t give much more of the story away (though I haven’t really given anything up), you have to read it from start to finish. You have to see through each of the characters’ eyes and try to figure out what happened and what is happening, who to trust and who not to. This is Richard Thomas’s debut novel, and if this is the norm for him, I will be eagerly awaiting his next novel with dark fascination.

Book Stats:

• Paperback:
• Publisher: Otherworld Publications (July 1, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10:
• ISBN-13:

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