The Traveler

Clichéd and predictable beyond belief. The Twilight series seems mature and intricate compared to this contrived dud.This shows what marketing and a mysterious penname can do. Rumors are Dan Brown wrote this. Think of Da Vinci code without all that history and comic book characters. Well it isn't even that good. This is niche marketing at its worst. They created a false Internet buzz that turned out to be the publishers about the mystery of this book.You can hear the focus groups planning the story. "Hey let's make the bad brother a corporate wannabe and the good one should be cool and surf or ride a motorcycle or skydive on a motorcycle!"If you are over 14 avoid this.

Another ridiculously good book that found me by pure chance. All the conspiracy theorists of the world, this book is definitely for you. As I count myself one of the men in the tinfoil hats, that book felt like home.

My mom-in-law gave it to my hubby to read and it was gathering dust in our car, until one day I went to work forgetting my own book (oh, horror!) and had to make do with this one.
I was so engrossed in it, I did not put it down until it was finished. Thanks, Mom! *grinning*

Brilliant conspiracy thriller with a neck-breaking pace. Somehow it had the style of Heroes despite a very different plot. I kept hearing this music in my mind, I swear!

Maya is a Harlequin, a secret warrior trained since her childhood by her father to live show more off the grid and to protect The Travellers at all costs.

Travellers are people who can astral travel in other dimensions and come back seeing the world as whole, preaching freedom from control and more harmonious society. This is why they are known as great spiritual leaders and get killed all the time by Tabula - a secret organisation striving for a total control over the world.

When Maya is 17 she has to kill a member of Tabula. At that time she is standing guard over one monk - a sort of teacher for travelers, and the murder is as much as in self-defence as to protect her guy.

Shaken, she breaks away from her dad and Harlequins and tries to live a normal life, getting education and starting working in one of London firms. All that changes few years later when her dad contacts her asks her to come and meet him in Prague.

What happens after that is one phenomenal race against time and almost total technological control of Tabula when Maya has to find the last two travellers on Earth hiding in US and save them before Tabula gets them first.

There are so many things in this book that make you stop and think how every new gadget, every new CCTV camera and every new "anti-terrorism law" tighten the noose around our necks. I find it really interesting as well, that the identity of the author himself is unknown.

John Twelve Hawks lives off the grid and talks to his publisher and editor through untraceable Internet connection and satellite phone with a scrambler. No one knows who he is and what he does, and I think it's so awesome!

Fantastic book, that makes you think and it's choke full of action as well. Really recommended. show less

(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 here illegally.)

Too Awful to Finish: An ongoing essay series

The Accused: The Traveler, by "John Twelve Hawks" (pseudonym)

How far I got: 24 pages. Yeah, I know.

Crimes:
1) Taking one of the few opportunities each year that occur for a science-fiction book to get a general-interest marketing budget, and wasting it on this hacky, sloppy, glorified fan-fiction dreck.

2) Clumsily ripping off major concepts from four sci-fi movies and six sci-fi novels within the first three chapters, in an astonishingly offhanded way that makes the author seem like he never thought show more anyone would figure it out.

3) Being particularly heinous with the Slow Death by Exposition, an already consistent problem within a lot of genre work but especially bad here. "Harlequins prefer old-looking cities." "Harlequins only live in places with three separate exits." "Harlequins only wear dark, expensive fabrics with custom tailoring." Yes yes yes, and Chuck Norris has a f---ing posse, I get it.

4) Affecting that cloying, obvious, Benetton-rainbow style of multiculturism so common in this Web 2.0 era; where there's a Japanese Harlequin and an Arab Harlequin and a British Harlequin and a whole globe of other superfriends, traipsing their way across the world to have the same exact bland conversations and bland action scenes no matter where they are. And by the way, "Twelve Hawks," just because you've looked up the names of a couple of metro stations does not mean that you've painted a convincing mental image of that city. Give us a sense that you actually know something about all these global locations your book is known for, besides the stuff you can look up at Wikipedia.

5) Not understanding that making a plucky, quirky, rebellious pale young girl the main hero was already tired and cliche 20 damn years ago. Also, for making her too much like Lara Croft. Also, not the marginally cool Lara Croft from the videogame but the infinitely annoying Angelina-Jolie Lara Croft of the movies.

6) Deliberately withholding the author's real name, in a desperate bid to drum up a little viral-marketing-style publicity over who it might be. Come on, Doubleday, we all know who the real author is; some pasty, acne-riddled 23-year-old nobody, who wears floor-length leather coats and sunglasses at night to the Saturday-night filk session of Dragonomicon 17. "Worst. Attempt. At. Building. False. Suspense. Ever!"

7) Convincing me to completely give up on a 500-page book before even hitting chapter 4. Seriously, that's impressive.

8) Making this the first book in a trilogy. A trilogy?! Cheese and Rice, Doubleday, are you freaking kidding me?!

Verdict: Innocent by reason of insanity.

Sentence: Indefinite incarceration in the St. Asimov Home for Wayward Science Fiction Fanboys Who Think They Too Can Write A Novel Because They've Seen The Matrix One Zillion Freakin' Times. show less

Yes, there has been a lot of marketing hype regarding the hyper-anonymity of Mr. John Twelve Hawks who, like his countercultural characters in "The Traveler," has supposedly decided to live off "the Grid" and avoid exposing his precious identity in a post-9/11 world where the government has increased its surveillance of citizens under the guise of anti-terrorism paternalism. And yes, one could engage in an endless debate over whether this book is best labeled as speculative fiction, techno-thriller, urban fantasy, or science fiction.

But these issues, while perhaps interesting topics of discussion, are ultimately much less relevant than the fact that this is a highly entertaining thriller, with a premise that will appeal to fans of "The show more Matrix" franchise and an anti-control theme that will resonate with conspiracy lovers and Robert Heinlein readers. Heinlein once wrote that "political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire." Mr. Hawks's work fully embraces this same theme as well as the Aldous Huxley-ish viewpoint that science without mysticism is ultimately meaningless.

In the tradition of the best thriller writers, the author manages to avoid the pitfalls common to many first-novelists, juggle multiple points of view, and keep the pages turning with cliffhanger chapters. He also writes with a direct, unpretentious style that aids in the suspension of disbelief and fits well with the technology-laden world he has created. And his characters, particularly Maya and Gabriel, have more depth than the cookie-cutter heroes common to books of this sort.

At times, this book teeters on the edge of becoming an over-the-top amalgamation of too many proven Hollywood elements (martial arts, quantum physics, Buddhist meditation, "Highlander"-esque chases, a "Terminator"-like bodyguard, travel to other dimensions a la "The Matrix," etc.), but the author's palpable passion for the philosophical threads running through the book somehow links everything together in a way that is both entertaining and mentally stimulating.

-Kevin Joseph, author of "The Champion Maker" show less

I will say up-front that I really liked the concepts in this metaphysical science-fiction thriller; it was the execution that got to me. The plot, in a nutshell, is this: certain people, called Travelers, have the ability to move across dimensions and bring back messages about how we can free ourselves from the various bonds that imprison us. These are the prophets and spiritual leaders and revolutionaries that have appeared throughout human history — the Jesuses and Buddhas, Gandhis and MLKs and Joans of Arc. But because they subvert the dominant paradigm, those who are in power or want to be in power systematically try to destroy them. These people are very well funded, organized and connected. Then there are the lone warriors who show more have vowed to protect the Travelers, the Harlequins. They are underfunded, constantly hunted and have been nearly wiped out, as have the Travelers. So the plot revolves around one of the last of the Harlequins protecting one of the last remaining Travelers from the people who this time want to capture him and harness his abilities for their own gain. Got it? I haven’t even mentioned the quantum computer yet, or the Great Machine.

The problem is that the author needs to hone his craft. The pace of the story is hampered by awkward writing, to the point where I was mentally editing as I went along. Also, I was disappointed to get to the end and find out I was reading Book 1 of a trilogy — I hate when that’s not confessed straight up, on the front cover. I rarely invest my reading time in series, and only then if they are incredibly well written. So it looks like I won’t be doing any more traveling with John Twelve Hawks. show less

Harrowing despite its predictability, this first in a trilogy is a good adventure tale, with martial arts, religion, social engineering and science fiction stirred together with just a soupcon of didacticism.

The Harlequin Maya is one of a dwindling band of people fated to risk their lives protecting Travelers, who can mentally leap into other worlds while leaving their corporal selves back in the regular reality. Exactly what Travelers' purpose is, aside from this superpower, is not made clear, other than that they may be all that keeps Citizens from being sucked into the Vast Machine. The VM, run by a crew called the Brethren and sounding a lot like the old military-industrial complex, monitors every move and dime spent by the show more Citizens, all in the name of Control. Again, to what purpose, other than the personal power of a few Men With Big Guns, who knows. They do have a cool quantum computer and some wicked gene-splicing technology.

Anyway, Maya is sent by the remaining Harlequin bigwigs to protect possible Travelers Gabriel and Michael Corrigan. The bad guys get to Michael but Maya and a duo of brave African Americans manage to hang on to Gabriel, who becomes not only a bona fide Traveler but also Maya's love interest.

He goes off on some Travels to really nasty places, again raising the question of what exactly the purpose of Traveling to Other Realms is. Is there a better world out there? If not, why not just try to make the one we've got a better world?

The privacy issues at the heart of "The Traveler" certainly are frightening and the politics of this post-Patriot Act novel are clear. But in this book, the sword definitely beats pacifism. show less

The ideas in this The Traveler are brilliant, and it is well written. The Travelers and Harlequins fight against massive odds to stop the Brethren from controlling every inch of the earth and every aspect of each person's life. Their goal is to use computers and technology to watch everyone at all times. This seems pretty close to where society is going, so it is fun to root for the band of the few freedom fighters. I bought the second book The Dark River and am reading it now.