(also reviewed)
Order TOBACCO-STAINED MOUNTAIN GOAT here
Order ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF VICISSITUDE here
Order WHO IS KILLING THE GREAT CAPES OF HEROPA? here
My old man believed in first impressions. He thought people who didn't understand the importance of making a strong first impressions were idiots, underachievers too caught up in their own ego to appreciate the big picture. Over a decade of living on my own proved him right, but every rule has its exception. Take Andrez Bergen, for example. His first novel TOBACCO-STAINED MOUNTAIN GOAT struck me as an enjoyable oddity and I almost threw the towel on him after reading WHO IS KILLING THE GREAT CAPES OF HEROPA? Sometimes, it only matters to make a decent enough impression to keep your reader doing what he should be doing. If Andrez Bergen hadn't persevered through his flaws, I wouldn't have got to read the hidden treasure that it DEPTH CHARGING ICE PLANET GOTH.
Mina is a young, nerdy goth girl navigating her way through the land-mined paths of teenagehood and high school the best she can. She's having some issues at home though, suffering from the abuse of one of her family members, and her overflowing imaginary created an imaginary friend called Animeid in order to help her cope with such a difficult situation. Mina's becoming a young woman, though and she has to face important decision that'll dictate the course of her upcoming adult life. Reality and fiction always end up going their separate ways, but in order to overcome her demons, Mina will have to bulldozer a new path for herself somewhere in between both.
Andrez Bergen has finally cracked it open. I've always believed in his peculiar, feverish, staccato-delivered style, but thought that it was ill-fitting to his previous novels' content. The proverbial square peg in the round hole, if you will. It's right at home in DEPTH CHARGING ICE PLANET GOTH though, through the eyes of Mina, Bergen's nerdy and sensitive protagonist, who has a hundred centers of interest, and a hundred ways to cope with the challenges of her young existence. Mina even triggered my ol' empathy gland, which I hadn't used in a while. I used to be not that different from her, if you swap the goth obsessions for a nerdy fascination with every possible for of extreme metal. So there was an emotional component to my appreciation of DEPTH CHARGING ICE PLANET GOTH.
Apparently, DEPTH CHARGING ICE PLANET GOTH is not the end of the road for Mina...
There's more than a fun, nerdy protagonist to DEPTH CHARGING ICE PLANET GOTH, though. There is this polyphonic metafictional approach that's keep you bouncing from one world to another, sometimes through Mina's own fiction, sometimes through her imaginary and, what I thought made this approach interesting, Mina' situation is a part of every of her layers of reality in one way or another. DEPTH CHARGING ICE PLANET GOTH has this Christopher Nolan's puzzle-like quality to it that deploys the story in several mismatched pieces. It is slightly challenging, but it doesn't demand Olympian effort to follow since it has kind of a narrative highway tying everything together: Mina's family situation.
DEPTH CHARGING ICE PLANET GOTH is somewhat of a perfect storm for Andrez Bergen. It's a coming-of-age novel seen through the eyes of a tormented child trying to become an adult. It's whimsical enough not to be melodramatic and it's serious and cohesive enough to keep readers under. Bergen always struck me as being a tad overambitious in the past, but this works. It's like a wayward athlete finding the right team to make him happy and productive. If Andrez Bergen keeps going in this direction, he'll have a lifelong fan in me. He's a pretty eclectic and peculiar author, but if you have to choose one of his novels to read, make it DEPTH CHARGING ICE PLANET GOTH. It's one of the best novels I've read in 2015, so far.
DEPTH CHARGING ICE PLANET GOTH is somewhat of a perfect storm for Andrez Bergen. It's a coming-of-age novel seen through the eyes of a tormented child trying to become an adult. It's whimsical enough not to be melodramatic and it's serious and cohesive enough to keep readers under. Bergen always struck me as being a tad overambitious in the past, but this works. It's like a wayward athlete finding the right team to make him happy and productive. If Andrez Bergen keeps going in this direction, he'll have a lifelong fan in me. He's a pretty eclectic and peculiar author, but if you have to choose one of his novels to read, make it DEPTH CHARGING ICE PLANET GOTH. It's one of the best novels I've read in 2015, so far.