Blue Light

I think Walter Mosley was simultaneously channeling the ideas and thoughts of James Redfield, Bram Stoker, Fred Hoyle and John Russo when he wrote this rather pointless book. What a pity Walter didn't write this novel in the mid fifties because it would have made a great Ed Wood movie. Given some of the S&M elements in the novel a good working title for the movie would have been Plan 9 1/2 from Outer Space! Or perhaps, given Mosley's penchant for color-coding all the titles of his Easy Rawlings mysteries (à la John D. MacDonald's earlier Travis McGee series), perhaps a better title for the hypothetical Wood movie might be Gray Zombie? And surely there would have been a role somewhere in Ed's film that would have been ideal for a cameo show more appearance by Bela Lugosi?

It's rumored that George A. Romero bought the film rights to Blue Light the day after it was published so perhaps we will still be privileged to see a wide-screen rendition of this story sometime soon. Hopefully Dennis Hopper and Denzel Washington will be available when George does eventually raise enough capital to be able to shoot it.

It has been argued that this novel is really the sixth novel in the Easy Rawlings series (while Bad Boy Brawly Brown is, in actuality, the seventh) because the main protagonist narrator in Blue Light speaks and behaves exactly like Easy does in all the previous novels, but he simply goes by the name of Last Chance in this one instead. I'm not sure why, but hey, we all know it ain't easy being Easy! Anyway, despite his pseudonymous facade in this outing, Easy is still wandering around the streets of San Francisco as well as in other more rural locations of his home state of California, not to mention hanging out with characters that go by such unlikely names as Lythe, Nesta and Horace.

There are also lots of mutilated corpses in this novel. However, there is no mystery about who killed any of them as they are all the result of the dastardly actions of either Death (as personified by the zombie Grey Redstar) or Evil (as personified by psychopathic killer Winch Fargo) rather than the work of the usual crop of seedy underworld scoundrels, miscreants and culprits one normally encounters in an Easy Rawlings mystery. *** Spoiler Warning *** The pseudo-superhero battle between Death and Evil on the steps of the Sacramento state building is worthy of anything that has ever appeared in the pages of DC Comics, and although this bizarre novel's coup de grâce finally occurs inside tree Number One, most of the important and substantial action in the latter part of the story occurs behind tree Number Seven.

To Mosley's credit, he does let us all know at the end of the book that this whole story was just one of Easy's "bad trips" or flashbacks, most likely brought on by Rawlins' propensity for too much hard liquor consumption (and in this particular instance, I suspect, almost definitely combined with a bad dose of hallucinogenic drugs). Despite the fact they cart him off to the Camarillo state mental hospital at the end of this novel you just kinda know that our favorite gutsy hero Easy is not only going to recover from his most recent psychedelic recollections but that he will also ultimately shrug off this latest bout of manic depression (not to mention his stupid alias) and be back pluckier than ever in the next official Easy Rawlins mystery - which, in fact, if you read Bad Boy Brawly Brown, is what indeed happens.

I'm a very big Walter Mosley fan and believe he is one of the world's most talented literary authors - not just writing today, but period. However, while this is the worst effort of his that I've read to date, I'm also glad (as I'm sure the editors over at his publisher Little, Brown & Co. were too) that he got this novel out of his system so that he was able to get back on track again and continue going from strength to strength with each of his subsequent works. I like Mosley enough that I'm committed to reading pretty much his whole body of work, but I had to force myself to finish reading this novel. If you haven't read anything in the Mosley canon do NOT start here; this one is only for completists (masochists?) such as me. If you want to read a book full of Blues by Mosley, avoid Blue Light and read RL's Dream instead, because IMO that is still the best effort I've read by him to date. show less

In 1960s California, a number of people are struck by bolts of sentient, alien blue light. Some of them die instantly. Others find their consciousness somehow integrated with that of the light and develop enhanced perceptions and strange mystical abilities. One of them does both, and becomes a vicious killer.

It's hard to quite know where to start with this one. On the plus side, it's well written, with prose that's thoughtful, readable, and smooth. And some of the individual story elements are pretty good; I thought the undead antagonist was quite nicely done. On the other hand, the mysticism is vague and not very insightful, and some of its manifestations seem faintly silly. The most interesting plot thread gets all but abandoned for show more most of the second half of the book. And ultimately the whole thing seems, well, pointless. I honestly never felt like I had any reason to care one way or another whether these blue light people succeeded or failed in whatever the hell it was they were trying to do. If I'm feeling charitable and inclined to focus on the positive, I might say that Mosely does far too good a job of trying to portray something distant, incomprehensible and alien to the point where it has little to do with humanity. If not, I might suggest that he's just thrown a bunch of fantastical elements together hoping they'll add up to something profound and failed. In either case, it's kind of frustrating, because there's clearly some writing talent behind it all, and it was impossible to escape the expectation that there just ought to be something more. show less

Be forewarned: the first 15 pages of Blue Light are intense. Mosley is merely setting the scene and gathering characters for the center of the plot, but he does it with the finesse of swinging a two by four and guess what, reader? You're the one getting hit. People start dying in droves and Mosley doesn't hold anything in the way of sex or violence back. It's a hell of a way to start a story. But, wait. There's more. As the story progresses things go from intense to insane. Be prepared for a lot of violence and weird sex. What exactly is the story about? I'm not really sure. It's San Francisco, California in the mid 1960s. There is the weird blue light and a cult of people who have been affected (infected?) with it. The main character show more is Chance, a suicidal grad student who becomes a half blue light after he gets half involved with Orde, the cult's leader, prophet and former scam artist. Things get really strange when Juan Thrombone enters the picture and goes to war with Grey Redstar, also known as the Gray Man, in a forest of redwoods. show less

The weirdest thing about this weird book is that it ought to have filled me with the kind of horror that lots of violence and Death stalking the world as an all-powerful zombie, but instead it seemed essentially good-humoured.

The story of a group of people changed by a mysterious light from space and they become more than human. However there is one who was near death and he is hunting the changed, the Blues. Finding a place in the world and a future for themselves while surviving the attacks of the one who is hunting them.

This is almost a vampire novel, as ordinary humans can gain some of the powers of the powerful others by drinking their blood when it's prepared in a special way. But it's also a superhero story, but taken at that level it fails. As a more literary science fiction story that's where it's audience is, and that's where it failed to impress me. I'm not really one of the literary fiction fans. In ways for me it tried too hard to be clever and show more really all it did was read like some of the new-age inspirational fiction like The Tenth Insight.

Yes it was readable but no I didn't care for any of the characters, what happened to them passed over me and just didn't engage me in any meaningful way. I can see that many people would like it but I can also see that many people would dislike it. Which is reflected in many of the reviews I have found online. show less

Unlike his many other great books that WalterMosley has created "Blue Light" is totally different from his other books.For me it was hard getting into it maybe because I had this preconceive notion that it would be like his other books.The jumping around from character to character made it hard to follow the flow of the writing in which it cause me to put the book a side. That's a first considering I thought all his books were about the same.That's what I get for thinking but I do get that all his books are the same meaning in mystery not plot.This does has mystery through out the book, but reading it gives off a mystical feel to it sorta speak.Read for your self ,and form your own opinion about this book yours just might be different show more from mines. show less

I gave up on this book. It was just too strange and confusing for my taste.