Lacy Dawn’s father relives the never-ending Gulf War, her mother’s teeth are rotting out, and her best friend gets murdered by the meanest daddy on Earth. Life in the hollow is hard. She has one advantage – an android was inserted into her life and is working with her to cure her parents. He wants something in exchange. It’s up to her to save the Universe. Lacy Dawn doesn’t mind saving the … universe, but her family and friends come first. Rarity from the Hollow is adult literary science fiction filled with tragedy, comedy and satire.
“The abuse in the book is graphic, but the story arc is hopeful: a family recovering and becoming better together.” Publishers Weekly
“A fun, sometimes cleverly-gonzo, and even inspiring tale about an undaunted girl’s close encounter of the weird kind.” David Brin, SciFi Author
“Amusing at times, shocking at others, a touching and somehow wonderful SFF read.” Amazing Stories Magazine
“In the space of a few lines we go from gritty realism to pure sci-fi/fantasy. It’s quite a trip.” The Missouri Review
“Brilliant satires such as this are genius works of literature in the same class as Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm.’ I can picture American Lit professors sometime in the distant future placing this masterpiece on their reading list.” Marcha Fox, Retired NASA Engineer and SciFi Author
“Utterly compelling…a chilling, engaging verisimilitude that deftly feeds on both the utter absurdity of the characters’ motivations and on the progression of the plot. In the spirit of Vonnegut, Eggleton takes the genre and gives it another quarter turn.” Electric Review / Midwest Book Review
“A hillbilly version of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy…took serious subjects like poverty,ignorance, abuse…used tongue-in-cheek humor without trivializing them…profound…a funny book that most sci-fi fans will thoroughly enjoy.” Awesome Indies
“Sneaks up you and, before you know it, you are either laughing like crazy or crying in despair, but the one thing you won’t be is unmoved…a brilliant writer.” Readers’ Favorite
“The most enjoyable science fiction novel I have read in several years.” Temple Emmet Williams, Retired Reader’s Digest Editor
“Good satire is hard to find and science fiction satire is even harder to find.” The Baryon Review
“This piece of speculative fiction is nothing like anything I’ve read before…faces reality head-on while also pursuing themes that are outlandish…aptly mingled tragedy with humor.” Page Hungry Bookworm
“It is one of those books that if it does not make you think, you are not really reading it.” On My Kindle
“The writing feels timeless, classic and mature…it could be read in a college setting both for the craft itself and its unique brand of storytelling. The premise was brilliant.” My Trending Stories
“Difficult, funny, terribly sad, absolutely true, and extremely well told. It should be the winner of literary prizes.” Mary Thornburg, SciFi Author
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Hilarious on one level, tragic on another.
At first I didn’t know how or where to begin to categorize this story. Two sitcoms, “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “Third Rock from the Sun”, come to mind. It’s clearly in the Sci-Fa genre, a mixture of science fiction and fantasy, always effective for establishing an environment ripe for just about anything to happen. I must say that once I got past the first third of the book, which could be a bit troubling due to the horrific living conditions and home environment of the young heroine, Lacy Dawn, that I laughed–a lot.
The author’s style is unconventional, which I consistently admire, at least when it works, which it did. Written in an omniscient viewpoint, it took a little while to get used to the inner dialog of all the characters. Each individual’s spoken statements were typically followed by an italicized blurb of what they were really thinking. While at first it was confusing, it was nonetheless effective in getting to know the characters.
The story itself is definitely unique as well. It centers around a young girl named Lacy Dawn who lives in poverty in a dysfunctional and abusive rural environment. This is not ever expressed in a horribly graphic manner and does a great job of setting the tone and setting, though there were times I was worried about whether it would get worse. Much to my relief, it didn’t. Her father, Dwayne, is a Gulf War vet with a severe case of PTSD. Her mother, Jenny, continually reminds her daughter (as well as herself) that Dwayne “used to be a good man.” Their neighbor, Tom, is a good friend of the family with a “secret garden” that he pays Lacy Dawn to tend. The produce involved is not so much mystical as illegal, given that its marijuana. Needless to say, numerous joints are rolled in the course of the story.
Lacy Dawn believes that it’s a child’s responsibility to fix one’s parents. This is certainly different than the usual practice to blame one’s parents. She’s not only highly intelligent, but has been chosen to save the Universe, a task for which she is being groomed by DotCom, an android who has arrived from elsewhere in the cosmos and lives in his spaceship on a nearby hill. At first it was difficult for me to figure out whether DotCom as well as Lacy Dawn’s conversations with the trees and her deceased friend, Faith, plus her ability to float “Roundabout” to visit her spacey friend, were simply part of a child’s vivid imagination. Either way, it was believable and contributed to the mood of the story.
I don’t want to get into spoiler territory so won’t say anything further about the basic story, other than to say that the remainder is entertaining. It’s loaded with plenty of raw humor along with interstellar jaunts to strange new worlds populated with numerous aliens. The characters were definitely well fleshed-out by their hilarious inner dialogs, reaction to various situations, and crude honesty.
Underlying all this, however, at a deeper level, is a rather sad, even tragic, commentary on our society. The fact that such situations exist is no secret. Otherwise, the story would not have been so believable. Neither is there any magical or interstellar entity out there to rescue those caught in the trap of poverty, need and abuse. So often the thought patterns of those living in such conditions revolve around sexual satisfaction, a good cannabis harvest, and whether the food stamps will last until the end of the month.
My only criticism of the story itself, at least at the superficial level, is that toward the middle it felt a bit disjointed. The plot broke down somewhat with too many “shopping trips” to “The Mall” where momentum was lost. The ending, while satisfying, was slightly less than I’d hoped for.
Thus, you may wonder why I awarded this story five stars. That’s because it made me think. Very few stories I’ve read recently manage to do that. There’s sufficient symbolism to place this story soundly in the literature category. What better disguise for difficult topics than humor?
There’s Lacy Dawn, the child who’s been exposed to and seen things no ten year old should, who has genius potential and wise beyond her years. Fixing her parents versus blaming them, what a concept. Then there’s DotCom, the android from another world, who’s there to help Lacy Dawn achieve her destiny, yet he begins to evolve and become a bit too human under the influence of people who would best be described, albeit rudely, as white trash.
The materialism of The Mall, principles of capitalism, what constitutes a celebrity or inspires human motivation to excel or achieve can all be found lurking beneath a raw and sometimes vulgar look at the human condition. Even the ending holds a powerful message when looked upon more deeply. Who’s really in charge and is it a higher or lower lifeform? The answer to that is definitely politically incorrect, a term invented to cover up that which will ultimately destroy civilization if we continue to yield to its misguided allure.
If you want a cleverly orchestrated story saturated with sci-fi and fantasy and packaged with plenty of crude, bathroom humor, you’ll enjoy this book tremendously. If you can’t deal with coarse language, don’t even bother. If you enjoy reading stories at a deeper level and analyzing what they’re really trying to say, you’ll likewise enjoy it, probably even more. Brilliant satires such as this are genius works of literature in the same class as Orwell’s “Animal Farm.” I can picture American Lit professors sometime in the distant future placing this masterpiece on their reading list.
The Hollow, where Lacy Dawn lives with her family is one of the poorest areas going. Her father beats her, her Mom is just down trodden. Somehow Lacy is able to converse with trees and does so often. Her best friend is beaten to death by her father. Lucy is bound and determined to keep going to school and to making her parents better. Then she meets up with an android in a rock in the woods–and with his help–all their lives change!
At the beginning I wondered whether all this imagining was a young girls escape from reality–but then this is science fiction! I really had to laugh at some parts and came close to crying at others–
Will Lucy Dawn save the universe? Read this book it is quite enjoyable and may open your eyes to child abuse and the welfare system.