Okla Elliott and Raul Clement's The Doors You Mark Are Your Own will be published by The Dark House Press (Curbside Splendor Publishing) in March 2015.
Information about the authors:
Okla Elliott is currently an Illinois Distinguished Fellow at the University of Illinois, where he works in the fields of comparative literature and trauma studies. He also holds an MFA in creative writing from Ohio State University. His work has appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, Harvard Review, Indiana Review, The Literary Review, New Letters, A Public Space, The Southeast Review, and Subtropics, among others. He is the author of a collection of short fiction, From the Crooked Timber, and a collection of poetry, The Cartographer's Ink.
Click here to visit Okla Elliott's official website.
Raul Clement lives in Urbana, IL. His fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have been published in Blue Mesa Review, Coe Review, As It Ought to Be, and the Surreal South '09 anthology. He is an editor at New American Press and Mayday Magazine.
Information about The Doors You Mark Are Your Own:
Joshua City is one of seven city-states in a post-apocalyptic world where water is scarce and technology is at mid-twentieth-century Soviet levels. As the novel opens, the Baikal Sea has been poisoned, causing a major outbreak of a flesh-eating disease called nekrosis. Against this backdrop of political corruption, violence and oppression, a struggle for control of Joshua City ensues, and a revolutionary group called The Underground emerges.
The Doors You Mark Are Your Own is a sweeping literary epic - the result of years of painstaking writing and world-building by two brilliantly imaginative minds - that readers will get lost in and never want to end.
A REVIEW OF OKLA ELIOTT AND RAUL CLEMENT'S THE DOORS YOU MARK ARE YOUR OWN
The Doors You Mark Are Your Own is a literary dystopian masterpiece of an epic scope that nicely differs from other new speculative fiction novels. It's the first part of the Joshua City Trilogy.
This novel has been written in a slightly different way than other new speculative fiction novels. The text has been translated from Slovnik and other languages into English, so the actual authors are merely "translators". The story was originally written by a fictional person called Aleksandr Tuvim and it was decoded into English by Okla Elliott and Raul Clement so that people could read it. This kind of storytelling technique has been used a few times in speculative fiction, but not many authors use it, so it added a unique touch of style to the novel.
In my opinion The Doors You Mark Are Your Own is exceptionally good dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction. I've read quite a lot of this kind of novels and I can say that this one clearly stands out due to its epic story, beautiful prose, well-created world and combination of many elements. Science fiction novels like this one are unfortunately very rare, because most authors tend to avoid writing epic literary novels and forget to pay enough attention to the prose, characterization and worldbuilding.
Here's a bit of information about the story:
- In the prologue Aleksandr Tuvim explains how he was shown mercy by General Schmidt and how he began to write the history of Joshua City by General Schmidt's request.
- The real story begins after the prologue: Nikolas Kovalski is a medical student who's interested in finding a cure for the nekrosis disease that is caused by tainted water. He has a brother, Marcik, who has joined the Guard, and a friend called Adrian Talbot. William Adams is the mayor of Joshua City who has quite an intriguing past. As the rotting-sickness spreads, Mayor Adams tries to stay in power and control things...
There are quite a lot of characters in this novel, but the authors focus the narrative nicely around Nikolas, Marcik, Adrian and Mayor Adams. Nikolas is the hero of the story and he begins to lead the resistance movement called The Underground.
The characterization is good, because the characters are three-dimensional and have pasts and secrets of their own. The authors write fluently and fascinatingly about the characters' lives and gradually reveal things about them to the readers. In my opinion the characters are brought vividly to life by descriptions about their lives and childhood experiences that have defined and shaped them to be what they are now. They have endured and experienced many things, but they all have survived into adulthood and have to deal with what's going on in the society.
The worldbuilding is rich and memorable. As the story begins to unfold, the world opens up to the readers in a wonderfully vibrant and vivid way. The descriptions of the places, happenings and people feel realistic and the authors are capable of evoking images of a city where clean water is scarce and technology hasn't advanced much.
The events take place in Joshua City, which is one of seven city-states in a post-apocalyptic alternate reality. In the Before-Time the water went bad and the plague began to spread, people died and whole nations were wiped away. When the Seven Cities were built, people entered the After-Time. Soon there was a war and lives were lost, but The Seven Cities came together and agreed that as long as one of them has clean water, none shall go thirsty. This was called The Baikal Treaty and it has lasted until now. Unfortunately the water has gone bad again and times are dark as the rotting-sickness spreads in the world.
The nekrosis disease is a fascinatingly disturbing disease, because it eats the flesh. As a big fan of dark fantasy, horror, new weird and weird fiction, I was fascinated by this disease and its symptoms. Reading about the medical training was also fascinating for me, because the authors wrote surprisingly fluently about medical courses, corpses and procedures.
The Doors You Mark Are Your Own is a massive novel, because it's over 700 pages long. It's possible that there are readers out there who are frightened by its huge size, because most new speculative novels are much shorter, but they shouldn't be frightened by it, because it's a beautifully written quality novel and every page is worth reading. It's a relatively fast read, because once you begin to read it you won't be able to stop reading until you've reached the last page. (I can mention that it didn't take long for me to read this novel, because I enjoyed the story.)
The Doors You Mark Are Your Own contains many well-known and popular dystopian and post-apocalyptic elements and themes (politics, social commentary, resistance issues etc) that many speculative fiction readers are familiar with, but they're delivered in an entertaining and beautifully written format. It's amazing how well the story flows and how good it is, because it doesn't feel heavy or sluggish. Normally massive novels like this tend to have unnecessary filling and plenty of annoying fluff in them, but not in this case. It's great that the authors have managed to avoid using unnecessary filling material and concentrated on writing an atmospheric story.
The authors blend elements of Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany and even Golden Age Hollywood in such an easy and effortless way that you can't help but wonder how they've managed to keep all the threads in their hands. Their epic story sparkles with ambition, style and originality.
I was amazed by the quality of the prose, because Okla Elliott and Raul Clement write beautiful literary prose that attracts quality-oriented readers. The beautiful and nuanced prose highlights all the fine points of the epic story in an excellent way. It was easy for me to see that the authors have constructed the story carefully and have spent time honing and polishing the prose.
I noticed that this novel has echoes of great literary classics in it, but the story treads boldly along its own path, because it's pure speculative fiction from start to finish. The combination of speculative fiction and literary storytelling works perfectly, because the dark story comes to life in the hands of the authors.
I think that speculative fiction readers will like The Doors You Mark Are Your Own, but I also think that readers who don't normally read speculative fiction will enjoy reading it. Because this novel reads like a historical novel, readers of historical fiction may find it interesting. This novel can also be recommended to readers who enjoy reading new weirdish novels, because its literary contents and certain happenings may be of interest to them.
I look forward to reading the next novel, because it'll be interesting to read what happens in it. Because the authors seem to love storytelling and have written this novel out of love for storytelling and are good at writing literary prose, I'm sure that next novel will be worth waiting for and will please the readers.
I give this novel full 5 stars on the scale from 1 to 5 stars. I was very impressed by it and its literary qualities. (It's possible that certain readers may not understand the subtle beauty of this novel, but I honestly think that quality-oriented readers will praise it as much as I do.)
The Doors You Mark Are Your Own is a stunning and ambitious literary speculative fiction novel that should be read by all who enjoy reading well written fiction, because it's one of the best, biggest and most literary novels of its kind. It's an unforgettable vision of a dystopian and post-apocalyptic world that is ravaged by a horrible disease and social unrest.
Excellent and beautifully written speculative fiction!