In the politically fragmented alt-near-future American Union, nobody fully understands the cause of Mirror Resonance Syndrome (nor how to cure it). But they do know that its symptoms include dissociative episodes and paranoid thinking, and that one person with MRS conducted a shocking massacre in California. Victor was only four when that happened, but he’s struggled with his MRS diagnosis since. Though he’s a member of the wealthy Eastmore biotech family, their money—and patience—can’t protect him forever. The death of the family patriarch sends him off to find not only a cure but a new way of life, someplace where MRS isn’t so harshly criminalized.

Like much of the best speculative fiction, Cody Sisco’s BROKEN MIRROR is most effective in its proximity to reality. The story unfolds in a richly imagined near-contemporary world divided between rich, green technocracies and dusty desert territories out west. There’s an alternate history which seems to have split from our own around the end of the American Civil War, but the point serves for flavor and never steals the spotlight from the actual plot. Most importantly, though, BROKEN MIRROR captures the intrusive surveillance and infantilizing treatment suffered by many with different mental health conditions.

This is a stellar marriage of genre and theme. The surveillance dystopia is a common setting in science-fiction, but here the text movingly and painfully incorporates the experience of medicalization. Victor’s early experience of trying to pass a qualifying test is harrowing, demanding that he adequately perform the role of “good patient” to the exacting standards of a skeptical, unsympathetic examiner—with his basic rights hanging in the balance. Human moments like these (compare, further, another protagonist’s ongoing struggles with addiction) make BROKEN MIRROR stand out far better than its invented history or near-future technology would otherwise.

The prose itself is flexible and bold, more than capable of describing both Victor’s internal sensations of an acute MRS episode and fast-paced action in physical space. The story spends a lot of time on dusty, unremarkable stretches of highway, but thoughtful descriptive language—like a particular hill that sticks out “like a duckling that had wandered away from the brood”—enlivens the narration. Sometimes the rhythm alone of a phrase like “[t]he boughs of orange trees hung heavy with unpicked fruit” elevates the text. Small, embodied moments—such as when Victor hears a human scream, only to realize it’s the sound of a metal door screeching open—keep the reader well-aligned with the characters’ perspectives. Though relatively little happens and the central plot questions remain mostly unanswered, the ride is rarely dull.

BROKEN MIRROR is not a pyrotechnic piece of cosmic sci-fi about exploring the outer wilds of existence (at least, not yet; there is a sequel available already). It is, however, a very effective piece of fiction with a crisp, complex setting and a sympathetic human core.

Crisply and actively told, Cody Sisco’s BROKEN MIRROR expresses powerful empathy for those suffering from the stigma of mental illness in our own society today.

~Dan Accardi for IndieReader