Few writers can lay claim to the accomplishments of Tampa poet and author Elissa Malcohn. Her just finished six-part Deviations series scales new heights on the dark side of speculative fiction, and does so in sweeping, epic fashion. I’ll start right off by saying my review of Second Covenant only reinforces my conclusion after reading Covenant, which I awarded five out of five stars. Second Covenant, the sixth and concluding episode of the breathtaking world, lives, and cultures of Malcohn’s masterpiece creation is a fitting conclusion to the story, while indeed, leaving a door open for an all new series should the gifted writer so choose. I begin with the execution of judgment: Five stars out of Five for Deviations, Second Covenant ©2011 by Elissa Malcohn. I have read literally thousands of books in my lifetime. During my time as a critic, this is the first time I’ve offered the same writer five stars twice.
Without giving anything away – I don’t like spoilers – let me introduce you as best I can to Malcohn’s world, and hope my feeble attempt at literary exemplitude is thorough enough to spike your interest in her FREE downloadable series.
The Masari and Yata live in symbiotic relationship, both dependent upon the drug Destiny. For the Yata, the drug is bliss, sexual high, ecstasy, and addiction. It transforms them not only psychologically, but physiologically as well. For the Masari, who feed on the Destiny infused flesh of the Yata, it provides sustenance, a need as real as the addiction of the Yata. But for the few born non-dependent, Masari must consume Yata flesh to survive.
This is the world of the Covenant, the sacred symbiosis that lets the two civilizations mate and bear young, and murder in the sacred hunt through which they coexist.
This is the story spanning generations of Masari and Yata.
This is the conclusion of the quest for parity and an end to Yata dependence.
Told in this final volume as a series of first person narratives by the primary characters, often employing varying sequential views of the same events through the eyes of different narrators, Malcohn’s tale is staggering in its dark complexity. I did not want to enjoy this deliciously dark series, but I found myself unable to put it down. I began my journey with a Sony reader, and finished with a Kindle, reading from one while the other recharged, so compelling and captivating is this fiercely disturbing saga. Perhaps my own personal depravity – the moral depravity that theologians tell us lives within us all due to original sin – is what drove me on; perhaps I just like a dark, cruel, hard tale that doesn’t involve Vampires or eleven year old wizards.
From scratch Malcohn builds her world, her cultures, her people, their histories, superstitions, battles, romances, orgies, successes, and failures, ending almost where it began, on the shoulders of an old woman who was once a young girl bred to breed food for the Masari. No longer the diamond in the rough that was Deviations: Covenant, Second Covenant is a fully clarified grade-A gem in the world of speculative fiction. A must read for lovers of the dark side of the genre. This is not your daddy’s science fiction. This is hard core, riveting, and page turning. Everything good fiction should be. And, perhaps most profound is that it is frighteningly believable! The series has spawned so many hits on the author’s web site that it is a regular occurrence for it to reach its monthly traffic limit and shut down well before the end of the month.
Deviations: Second Covenant, © 2011 by Elissa Malcohn, ISBN-13: 978-0-9819764-5-7 is a FREE e-book, but readers are encouraged to make donations to the writer through a PayPal link on her web page – provided you get there early enough in the month to download the book.
Tampa readers, and readers everywhere can find Deviations, Second Covenant on the author’s website, Smashwords.com, and six-volume Omnibus CDs available to special collections. The science fiction/fantasy collection at USF in Tampa now carries both the Covenant paperback and the CD (as do other, non-local, collections around the world).
Free .pdf copies of all the series books are available at Obooko.com and at Goodreads. This link lists alternate free-download sites for the series. Malcohn will also send autographed Omnibus CDs free of charge to any interested public libraries. Contact information for the author is available on her website.
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