Synopsis
A runaway boy's quest for an ancient Jewish mystic text introduces him to a fascinating cast of characters, including a renowned smuggler, an albino Rastafarian, and a treacherous double agent. A first novel. IP.
Reviews
The plot of Kotler's intriguing but often maddening first novel may perplex even the most patient reader, but what book-lover can resist a story about book thieves? Using the jump-cut technique now almost compulsory in mysteries and thrillers, Kotler takes the reader from New Mexico to Tierra del Fuego to Old Jerusalem, weaving together several characters into his complex if not quite winning story about drifters, a renegade priest and smugglers of precious documents. The mysterious Pena, an old Santa Fe woman, draws Angel, a 17-year-old runaway, into her scheme to locate an ancient Kabbalistic text, the Sefer ha-Zaviot, believed to hold a secret shortcut to heaven. Pena persuades Angel to accompany her to Mexico to find another Sefer-seeker named Padre Isosceles, but Pena dies upon reaching the padre's monastery. Angel flees to the States to find Pena's friend, smuggler Coyote Bl#, who plots to retrieve the Sefer from the Vatican, although by then he knows that Padre Isoceles and his dedicated followers will kill any competitors. The story then moves on to rock climbing in California and to the depths of the Vatican library, and it is there that Kotler sets his most powerful scenes, depicting the Church's need to bury contrary beliefs. Along the way, Kotler dips into enough esoterica (the Kabbalah, I Ching, set theory, Sufism) to keep a curious reader intrigued, and the dialogue is always witty and cool. But the novel is overwritten, and the plot far harder to piece together than it should be, making this ambitious intellectual thriller less involving than it might have been.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
A raffish intercontinental quest for a priceless manuscript (the Sefer ha-Zaviot) possessed by the Vatican is the core of this fancifully Pynchonesque first novel set in New Mexico and Colorado, Rome and Vatican City, Jerusalem, and Sumatra. The volume in question, which is ``said to detail a journey Jesus made through Tibet'' and also contain a map revealing the way to heaven, attracts the interest of a dashing smuggler (Coyote Bl), a mysteriously aged woman (Pena, perhaps ``the last descendant of Ghengis Khan''), a Japanese priest from Patagonia (Amo), and a teenaged drifter (dubbed ``Angel''). These characters bond together in an elaborate conspiracy that takes (some of) them via the old Roman sewer line to the very bowels of the Vaticanand climactic confrontations with ``The Society'' that has secretly observed their actions and, most fatefully, with the determined priest (Padre Isosceles) who desires the Sefer ha-Zaviot for his own malign purposes. A parallel plot, which is quite confusingly integrated with this main one, involves the dreamlike adventures of Johnii Rush, an American in Jerusalem whose fascination with the secrets of the I Ching sends him to Sumatra, and into the reluctant clutches of a beautiful woman (Christiana) manipulated by The Society. Whether Christianity, Buddhism, or Catholicism provides ``the angle'' leading most directly to nirvana (or whatever) isn't spelled out explicitly in the dizzying denouement (which, incidentally, hints that its story may continue). But there's much fun to be had along the way, in such imaginative episodes as ``The Great Cattle Jihad'' of Uruguay and in Kotler's racy summary prose and imperturbable deconstructions of sacred wisdom literature (such as the Kabbalah: a.k.a. ``Jewish voodoo''). As baffling and exhausting as it is accomplished, and heavily indebted to Pynchon (both V and Gravity's Rainbow), Edward Whittemore's Jerusalem Quartet, and Joseph McElroy's A Smuggler's Bible. Nonetheless, a spectacular debut by a formidably gifted writer who may well be assembling a magnum opus that we'll have to wait to judge as a totality. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Steven Kotler's first novel sports a cast of colorful characters in search of an ancient text, the Sefer ha-Zaviot. A runaway boy, Angel, an experienced smuggler, Coyote Blu, an eccentric priest, Amo, and an albino Jamaican, Gabriel, come together to steal the antique book from a secret library hidden within the Vatican. Their friend, Johnii (or John II) helps them when he can but is on his own search to find the sixty-fifth hexagram of the I-Ching. A sinister priest, Isosceles, wants the Sefer ha-Zaviot for himself, and the four men must fight him off during their quest. What makes this novel a good read are the various villains, heroes, and exotic locations woven into the story that enliven the journey. Kotler has written a novel of spirituality and mysticism. And, though each of the four thieves has a personal reason for finding the Sefer, the novel overall explores the love of ancient cultures, their languages and writings. Michelle Kaske
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