BookLife Reviews
05/30/2022
Kelley’s ambitious follow up to 2021’s science-meets-spirituality thriller The Lost Theory stands as another literate cosmological epic, this time finding its professor heroes—Sean McQueen, literature, and Emily Edens, quantum physics—facing the fallout in 2027, both good and terrifying, of their adventure nine years before, which involved the discovery and sharing of a murdered poet colleague’s world-changing “theory of everything.” The good: Raising kids, relishing Emily’s Nobel nomination, running a new college for women, and adjusting to a world that they’ve fundamentally changed. Their first brush with the bad comes from telepathic messages (“They come like coded packets of information that then bloom into a knowing within my mind”) received by Ting, the sister of their missing spirit guide, Juno. Has Juno ascended to a higher plane—or perhaps been abducted by beings we have no better term for than “aliens”?
From there, Kelley offers a sprawling, thoughtful epic involving intelligence agencies that the heroes bested in the previous book, a terrifying secret society, a “brain-mapping quantum computer” capable of controlling the human mind, and the tantalizing truth, teased early on, that “Our science fiction was the government’s secret truth.” Thriller readers should be aware that, among the many surprises on offer, Kelley favors thinking through the spiritual and philosophical implications of his ideas over fisticuffs and chases, though bursts of action (such as a set piece involving a wildfire or a showdown involving a branding) are handled with crisp clarity.
The second in a projected trilogy, The Devil’s Calling again centers the romance between its leads, and their embrace of spiritual practice—they meditate more often than they throw punches. That emphasis (and a luminous ending) will please readers who share that inclination, though the near-future technology is not developed to the standards of tech-thrillers. Refreshingly, narrator McQueen actually thinks like a lit prof, offering “a prayer that Dickens, not Kafka, would be the author of my ending.”
Takeaway: An ambitious thriller, blending science, spiritualism, advanced AI, and possible alien abduction.
Great for fans of: Marcel Theroux’s Strange Bodies, Ramez Naam’s Nexus Trilogy.
Production grades Cover: A- Design and typography: A Illustrations: N/A Editing: A- Marketing copy: A
Kirkus Reviews
2022-10-07
An academic and author, celebrated for revealing a scientific cosmology that refutes the Big Bang theory, fears harm will befall his lover as she embarks on a lecture tour.
Heaven (or Buddha or Vishnu) help those attempting to read Kelley’s sequel without first pilgrimaging through his debut New Age/SF thriller, The Lost Theory (2021). The discipleship curve is steep. Romantic literature scholar Sean McQueen published a hit book elucidating the theory of “constant creation”—an alternative cosmology to the Big Bang that has a strong correlation to Eastern mysticism. The result: Materialism-inclined villains invested in the status quo (particularly big tech heads, espionage types, and authoritarians) nearly killed Sean and his soul mate, scientist Emily “M” Edens. Several years later, the lovers run a female-oriented yogic college, Deeksha West, in coastal Oregon. M enjoys rock-star status as she starts a European lecture tour that challenges an upcoming human-machine digital interface. Meanwhile, Sean prepares a sequel to his bestseller, The Lost Theory (of course entitled The Devil’s Calling). But cherished mentor Juno gives Sean a troubling prediction that M will soon be “lost.” Potential threats include an old CIA enemy; Petrovsky, the post–Vladimir Putin Russian dictator; and those behind the trendy push to mass-link human brains everywhere in cyberspace (promising a utopia but setting the stage for a zombie takeover via artificial intelligence). Are Juno and Sean just paranoid? What is behind the bad vibes? With the hero’s dense, first-person prose covering reams of pop-culture references (song lyrics, especially), this novel offers a liberal arts milieu in which possibly fraudulent stanzas of Shelley and an antique painting hold immense importance. Imagine Umberto Eco emerging from a Shirley MacLaine retreat in Sedona, Arizona, where perhaps Dan Brown blockbusters were the only distraction. Things take an awfully long time to happen, and when they do, much verbiage results before anything is settled. Even then, a cliffhanger ending points pagodalike to the next volume, with many of the chess pieces still in play. Kelley’s ideas are intriguing, and readers will suspect the smart author is more of a grounded realist than his vision-struck, alien-believing narrator, Sean. But the engaging text is an acquired taste for adventure seekers, with the emphasis on seekers.
A charming, heavily New Age–influenced SF thriller that requires deep dives into dharma.
