Luke Presneill’s debut novel PURITY is the first of a trilogy called “The Saint of Suffering.” The setting is the planet Eden, where a shadowy religious order is being investigated by Jean. The world Presneill conjures is alive with detail; Eden is home to rival empires, peoples, and religions. Doctors are “Lazaruses,” telephones are “voxboxes,” and fine wine is “ambrosia.” The tone is dark and gritty, a sort of off-world gothic. Presneill delights in how archaic-sounding language evokes far-off times (the novel is alive with the language of worship, the terminology of the high church). Meanwhile, the author is alert enough to the possibility of misinterpretation that he includes a copious glossary at the end. Pacing is slow but steady, and the plot unfolds naturally.
The writing style, however, is somewhat ornate. Presneill is big on description, and adjectives are arguably overused: In the first two pages alone, we get lifeless husks, atrophied hearts, salt-kissed panes of glass, cerulean eyes, and so on. The following passage is fairly representative: “As the ecclesiarch marched towards the reluctant killer, the chamber gradually fell silent. Argumentative cultists allowed silence to ferment. None dared disturb actions deemed necessary for ensured salvation, nor stood against preventative damnations.” This is overwrought.
To his credit, such cliched descriptive writing is not ever-present (it is noticeably less prominent in the later chapters), and Presneill is also aware of the need to produce fresh metaphors and similes. Sometimes these miss the mark, though: “Unseen electrical squirrels chirruped as they scurried across dashboards” is certainly original, but more at home in a Sedaris memoir than a horror novel. There are many sentence fragments, and also copious use of ellipses (typically for no purpose other than to dangle open-ended trains of thought in front of the reader).
PURITY dallies with many interesting and momentous ideas, such as the points of contact between the higher emotion of faith and the baser emotions of anger and vengeance. The execution and style could do with some tweaking, but there is enough of interest here to allow the target audience to eagerly anticipate the next instalment in the series.
Though the style is overly florid, Luke Presneill's PURITY (The Saint of Suffering Book 1) is a diverting gothic tale that dwells on themes of religion, vengeance, and betrayal.
~ Craig Jones for IndieReader