The 6 Messiahs (1995)

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

I recently had occasion to think again about the exquisitely strange 1990s television show Twin Peaks, co-created by David Lynch and Mark Frost; and that got me thinking again about Frost's two genre novels from that time period as well, 1993's The List of 7 and '95's The 6 Messiahs, the first of which I read way back when it originally came out, which inspired me this month to check them out from the library here in Chicago. Essentially steampunk tales from the dawn of that term's creation, they tell related stories based on the idea of the real Arthur Conan Doyle going on a series of occultish adventures in the late 1800s, accompanied by a secret agent of the Queen named Jack Sparks who ends up providing many of the traits for Doyle's later Sherlock Holmes stories.

Almost twenty years later, I had mostly fond if not dim memories of the first book, one of the first steampunk tales I ever read; and indeed, re-reading it again this month, it was in fact as entertaining as my memory had it. But twenty years of genre development has made steampunk a much more sophisticated thing now than it was at its inception, and unfortunately these books now display the weaknesses that come with their age; read now in the wake of much better books that have come after, they seem a little clunkier than they did before, a bit more obvious in their machinations, and with a bad Hollywood tone much of the time, as if Frost were only writing them so that he could then sell the film rights, not surprising when it comes to an industry veteran like himself. Now combine this with the fact that the very concept gets kind of muddled by the second book -- the whole charm of the first one laying mostly in the idea of Doyle being a young, clueless, untested doctor, thrown into the middle of shadowy conspiracies he doesn't understand, an aspect missing in the sequel where he is now a field-tested veteran of the strange -- and it's easy to see why Frost eventually abandoned what could've been the start of a lucrative franchise, and has only penned sports-themed novels in the years since. Interesting for a lark, and for those curious about steampunk's origins, but not something you should go out of your way to read.

Out of 10: 7.9 ( )

An interesting premise, but doesn't go anywhere. How are these six people connected? Where did the Reverend come up with his strange ideas? How did he acquire his strange powers over people? What in heaven's name does he hope to achieve? WE NEVER FIND OUT... ( )

A sequel to The List of Seven, this is a fantasy/horror/thriller starring the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories, Arthur Conan Doyle, and his friend Jack Sparks, the prototype for Holmes, who has also come back from his near-death experience at the Falls. Unlike Holmes, however, Sparks is a shadow of who he was, and Doyle, on an American reading tour with his brother, finds himself drawn into a sinister conspiracy that involves the theft of the six major religious texts and the end of times.

An engrossing read, and a wonderful cast of characters, actual and fictional, but I missed the iconic London setting of the first book of the series. ( )