Order RATTLED BY THE RUSH here
There are things I don't debate on the internet. The creation of the universe and the meaning of life are two, for example. We are so enslaved by our perception that it's silly to even think we can understand what the fuck we're doing on Earth. I prefer to read science fiction instead as it explores the mysteries of the universe the way I think they are meant to be explored: creatively. I had no idea Chris Kelso' novel Rattled by the Rush was a scienceù fiction novel before picking it up and I clearly didn't understand everything about it, but it was a wild existential ride that offered a fun hypothesis to the meaning of everything.
I'm not sure that I've understood everything there is to Rattled by the Rush. It gets oddly abstract for pages at the time and that shit tends to leave me behind. So, there's this struggling comedian named Larry who's being interrogated by government agents in regards to a murder and a disappearance. He doesn't have anything to do with the case outside of being an acquaintance of the victim, but the bits of information the agents give Larry will tip him into an existential quest that will help him get over his breakup. What happens from there is not entire clear to me, but Larry gets in contact with a place called the Slave State, found in the fourth dimension.
I was told a couple weeks before getting into Rattled by the Rush that it was the final volume of a trilogy, but that it read like a standalone novel. Not sure if anyone who told me that had tried reading Rattled by the Rush as a standalone, but it proved to be very difficult. My mistake, really. But you might want to read Moosejaw Frontier and Transmatic before attacking this one. Otherwise I'm afraid it won't make much sense to you either. Chris Kelso obviously had a tight-knit cult following and it's not easy being the new kid in the Slave State, given the inherent logic and the idiosyncratic poetics of the place.
Now that I got this out of my system, let's talk about the fun stuff. Rattled by the Rush alternates the sacred and the profane during Larry's quest for transcendence in a way that rings true. Both universes are leaking into one another through subtle details, making one another unspeakably richer. The possibility that there are different realms that communicate with one another is what makes science fiction exciting, isn't it? Rattled by the Rush also has pretty clever metafictional passages where Chris Kelso takes the wheel himself, which I thought was bold and interesting. Not many genre authors do metafiction since Philip K. Dick *.
Rattled by the Rush shines by its form and style more than by its narrative to my unsuspecting eyes. It's a spiritual, poetic and metafictional novella with long abstract passages I didn't understand nor felt the need to. It's difficult to give you a definite assessment because I have the feeling the information I wasn't given in Rattled by the Rush probably is in Moosejaw Frontier and Transmatic, and it's my fault if I haven't read it first. What you need to remember from this review is that; Chris Kelso writes quirky and deceptively deep characters, that he has a potty mouth, a Joe Roganesque way of thinking about parallel universes and that you shouldn't read the third volume of a trilogy first if you want to understand what the hell's going on.
* Kelso subtly references him a couple times also.