At its broadest level, Michael Seagard’s MORI: The Lost Ones Volume 1 is the story of a broken man learning how to trust, heal his wounds, and love again (especially himself). But for the reader quickly turning page after page, the novel is a waggish, comical romp through a thriller that grows stranger, creepier, funnier, and more magical throughout. A mashup of science fiction, mystery, paranormal, fantasy, realism, comedy, and romance, MORI is one of a kind.
What gives this novel its heft, however, is what lies beyond the entertainment. The story contains two strata: the “real” world, miserably inhabited by Mori (the cynical, self-hating, alcoholic protagonist); and the “surreal” one he enters after an otherworldly being contacts him from a faraway island. Between them lies a story of love and redemption, each world reflecting the goals and emotions of the other. The novel’s plot line loosely tracks the Hero’s Journey formula, with its call to adventure, hesitations, tests, and enemies. But amidst its allegories and high moral themes, MORI has colorful characters and elicits out-loud giggles.
The story is narrated via Mori’s real-time logbook. Having cashed in his savings and retirement funds, Mori has moved to LA, where he spends his days drinking in his backyard, listening to the threats of a homeless man in the alley (whom he dubs “The Doom Portender”), the alluring laughter of a weed-smoking young woman next door, and the yaps of her small dog. Framing the story is a document written by the scribe of the Lili Gilders, a cult that worships Liliana “Lili” Merciades and whose members become key comrades in the book’s action.
The weirdness commences when a disembodied voice with a name that Mori shortens to Geri proffers a commandment. After establishing a few helpful clarifications (Geri speaks through a well while Mori speaks from “LA-2019”), Mori learns that he is to seek out Geri’s long-lost beloved—assisted periodically by channeling sessions between the two of them. Mori’s access to the portal is a psychedelically tinged joint prepared by Lili that can be smoked only under limited circumstances. Additional obstacles further restrict these crucial sessions. (A few of these are somewhat clumsy plot devices to goose up the story when it needs a complication.)
Mori begins encountering unnerving phenomena. Hours pass in a blink while minutes refuse to move forward: “Several beers later, my shadow goes on strike. There’s no two ways about it. It just gets up and saunters off while I sit here.” Then, on his way to the store, “I spot a man about my age, whose gaze is even more shellshocked than mine, walking like a zombie down the sidewalk” with a cockatoo on his shoulder. Apparently the bird wants to tell Mori something.
Although the novel’s narrator doesn’t discount that weird things can happen—this is LA, after all—his uneasiness is sufficient enough to report back to Geri, who, alarmed, tells him of the Lacuna. It seems that all people “on the mundane plane” are “encased in an impermeable, psycho-spiritual membrane that keeps us safe and separate from the world of the Lacuna, the liminal zone that exists between this life and the next one.” Unfortunately for a rare few, the membrane can be ruptured. All sense of reality is eventually lost. The unfortunates become stuck between their lives but unable to move onto the next one.
Understandably, Mori is upset and frightened by the news. Now he has real skin in the game. Complications, much merriment, wildly creative adventures, and serious creepiness ensue until arriving at an ending that is both organic and primed for further adventures. (MORI is the first of seven books in Seagard’s The Lost Ones series.) Throughout the silliness, however, is apt commentary on the human condition—with all its warts, nastiness, and needs.
MORI: The Lost Ones Volume 1 by Michael Seagard is a fast-paced, genre-bending comic novel that entertains while offering poignant insights into the vulnerabilities of the human condition. Combining almost too many genres to keep track of, MORI is thoroughly absorbing.
~Anne Welsbacher for IndieReader