Order TRANSUBSTANTIATE here
I wake up in total darkness as if floating in a pool of salt walter. My senses are at once absent and heightened. I am not cold or hot. I am not in pain or numb. I simply am.
Richard Thomas is one of these authors that challenges the concept of labels. What's fascinating about him is that he doesn't bunny hop from genre to genre, but he writes fiction that is radically different from what is done in today's game. TRANSUBSTANTIATE might just be his most unique work. It's a novel that celebrates and wallows in all the small things Richard Thomas does very well. It's a disorienting novel and I'm sure it's quite hermetic to Thomas first timers, yet it takes full advantage of the cyberpunk setting to create a unique and dynamic narrative.
TRANSUBSTANTIATE has seven narrators, all survivors of a population control experiment that turned into a genocide. They're caught in a modern day Eden where they are kept by what seems to be left of a government. As TRANSUBSTANTIATE begins, they are all isolated from one another, but you slowly discover their common grounds, their common past and their strong desire of getting the hell out of this fake paradise. The cast's yearning to live in the real world, to transcend captivity moves the story towards an inevitable, yet excruciating revelation. Without spoiling anything, I can say the ending of TRANSUBSTANTIATE is one of the few endings that feel satisfying compared to their actual story. That is a rare commodity.
One thing about TRANSUBSTANTIATE is that it lingers a lot. In this case, it's a positive thing. Richard Thomas turned this concept into an art, so his narratives never feel like they're packing cheap suspense. On the contrary, it contributes to the climate of secrecy and paranoia that feeds TRANSUBSTANTIATE as the several characters of the cast discover the same things with different angles, which creates another layer of conflict. Richard Thomas mastefully puts these fragments together, that don't seem to go with one another at first sight, and creates something bigger than the sum of its parts.
There might be a couple thousand people spread across the planet. Stuck on their various continents and islands. There have to be airplane pilotes and ship captains in that mess. Or not. We will place a beacon, set up radio communications, and see what we can find. But not yet. We have thing to deal with here and now.
I have one major complaint about TRANSUBSTANTIATE. Its chapters are separated in short subchapters (one or two pages), narrated by the different protagonists, all with a first person point of view. It becomes an issue as after twenty pages, you start struggling to remind yourself exactly who is talking. The subchapters are too short to create a strong sense of identity, so it's difficult to identify the narrator if you just get into your reading pace and flip pages mechanically, not paying attention to anything but the text. Thomas eventually remedies to the situation as his characters cross paths and writes some very compelling chapters with a third person point of view, but it's still a major issue I had with the book.
Cyberpunk meets postapocalyptic fiction, narrated in a quiet, intimate way only Richard Thomas has the secret to, that's what TRANSUBSTANTIATE has to offer. If that doesn't convince you to read it, I don't know what will. It became kind of a rare, cult book since it fell out of print, but I think it's a question of time before it hits the Kindle store worldwide. TRANSUBSTANTIATE is a sport to read, but there are plenty of athletic readers out there that love nothing more than to flex their mind's muscles. It's rare that I dream about a novel while reading it, but TRANSUBSTANTIATE is one of the rare cases. That alone is another unique feat.