Ninth Jay Lake Pre-Mortem Read-a-thon Review Up

After causing myself needless terror and pain by losing the post, and some of the review, I've got the last novel that's likely to be published by Jay Lake before his demise reviewed and appreciated at Shelf Inflicted, a group blog.

His own blog, Jay Lake, Writer, has a post today about "Special Dying Person Wisdom." He says something the Buddha said, in a different way. That so many teachers say, and so many students nod at, but still it remains something we all need to hear again, and again, and again: "But in any case, be kind. It costs you nothing and makes the world around you a better place."

Well, that's it, really. That's the whole deal in a nutshell. Even if my take-away from the entire experience of encountering Lake and his fiction was that, it was a transformative one. Reading these nine novels, reviewing them, and making the reviews as much about the experience as the book and saying thank you to the creator of the books pre-mortem, remind me to be kinder so I can make my corner of the world a bit better than it is now.

KALIMPURA brings Green's saga to its stopping place. In the end is the beginning; in the beginning is the end. It's a hard thing to do, to read a novel of maturing that comes from a person whose perspective is The End. But then again, if he's got time to tell the story, who am I to ignore it because I feel sad about how it's coming about?