Neil has a big secret: he can read minds. When he bumps into Pam at a party, he’s shocked to realize that she can too. While the two telepaths begin to investigate one another, Neil’s friend Justin is still grieving over the tragically early death of his wife—even chatting with an online stranger who seems to have access to her old journals. All the while, Edmund and Lettie are pondering why suffering exists and whether something can be changed (at the cosmic level) to prevent it.
A lot is happening simultaneously in Steve Kenney’s GLITCHING SOULS, all of it tied to the underlying idea that reality might be a simulation created by someone in another reality. Each of the storylines explores a derivative question: what if human abilities are simply pre-set, but could be changed within certain parameters? What would it mean to change the fundamental rules of existence? If everything is a simulation, is there a meaningful difference between a sufficiently advanced AI chatbot and an “organic” consciousness? These are all fun, interesting questions, and they can all make for compelling fiction.
Here, however, it feels as though the text’s attention is divided—preventing it from telling a single, complete narrative. Neil and Pam’s story feels the most complete, sketching out the shape of a romantic relationship, but much of the action is motivated and advanced by a kind of petty-crime noir (which is fun but never fully explored). A very present primary antagonist is both underdeveloped and underutilized, never presenting a straightforward obstacle for the protagonists to overcome. This isn’t to say that every story needs to be plot-heavy, or that all plots must have simplistic structural elements, but the book feels like all rising action and tension without any climax or real resolution. This frustration is notable in Edmund and Lettie’s storyline, too; there’s a great deal of discussion about building a social or political movement around the idea of reality-as-simulation, but there’s ultimately no movement-building or action. GLITCHING SOULS might get away with this if there were a strong sense of atmosphere—an omnipresent paranoia about the nature of reality, à la Dick or Vonnegut—but, on the contrary, the characters mostly treat their investigations as intellectual (rather than psychological) processes.
For a reader strongly compelled by the ideas themselves, and who won’t mind a lot of talking with little action, GLITCHING SOULS will fit the bill. Most, however, will likely be frustrated by the (fascinating and engaging) buildup without correspondent resolution.
Steve Kenney’s GLITCHING SOULS has an intriguing conceit and asks some interesting questions, but it feels like setup for a plot that never arrives.
~Dan Accardi for IndieReader