Shades: The Gehenna Dilemma
3.75/5 This book starts strong on the interesting premise that in the future people will be able to use part of their afterlife to pay off their life-life debts. Supposedly, one's soul has departed, so all this indentured labor is being performed by one's bodily (non-decaying) husk while one's essence actually goes and lives the good life in [insert happy after-death location here]. Cool, right? I am excited by this idea since I could finally renovate my bathroom – yet, I wonder, is it too good to be true? I am thinking so just based on the premise that there is no way I will ever get a chance to get that soaking tub I am dying for (← ha ha, see what I unintentionally did there?). The story that deals with the shades (the dead people) and the system surrounding it is excellent. However, the book soon morphs into Stephenson's Snow Crash meets Dungeons and Dragons with Jonah turning out to be some insanely good hacker able to whip out wizard-like – should I say mage-like? – spells that he exchanges with other hacker wizards and anthropomorphic viruses, etc. in one battle after similar battle. Thus the shade story is abandoned for a large part of Shades so we can follow Jonah's (with his trusty AI Sasha) quest to rescue his girlfriend from some bad dudes. We only end up getting back to the shades at the very end, which is sort of unfortunate. Dallaire does some neat world building on the Moon, the shade story is intriguing, and the general hacker/fighting brouhaha is fun for awhile. However, this last bit just becomes repetitive – there are only so many times Jonah needs to super quickly cast a ward (the techno spells) right before his opponent casts a ward – which of course he does – before you start skipping ahead. To top it off, I am pretty sure there is at least one battle that is repeated with synonyms in a later chapter. All of this is not bad per se, just sort of tedious. I think some parsimony and editing were warranted. Lack of an editorial touch was also apparent in a few mistakes in Shades: The Gehenna Dilemma. At two points I noticed a sentence just sort of trailed off or mushed with another sentence – a symptom of poor proofreading. Though to Dallaire's credit, there was a noticeable lack of typos or spelling errors that mistakes of this magnitude would suggest. There was also some inconsistency problems here and there – mostly annoying more so than disruptive (e.g. old people who project themselves – on video telephone sort of – in their true forms since they are bad at technology and can't get a handle on making up an attractive body – which stands out since that is pretty funny – but later an old person who projects themselves as they are is portrayed as unusual). There may a larger inconsistency at the end, but I can't say anything about that without spoiling and who knows, maybe I was jumping past another fight scene and just missed the bit that would make it make sense. All that said, I liked Shades a lot and Dallaire shows a lot of creativity. I will read the sequel since I find I am curious about what happens with the shades and the characters (especially the minor Genie character). I just hope for a slightly more streamlined story.
