MAMA-PAPA COMING FOR YOU
In the vast reaches of the Internet, there is a sex-vixen-pinup space creature named Izabael who travels from comic convention to comic convention, seducing middle-aged comic lovers and prepubescents alike. Wearing little more than a smile, she shakes hands, signs autographs, and takes pictures with people who most of us would guard our lunches from with every ounce of our being. She is the descendent of a Goetic daemon named Seere—an aspect of the subconscious, combining traits of both the Mercurial and Venusian.
In actuality, Izabael is Izabael Von Dragen, wife of author Shawn Von Dragen, and she is just another humanoid from Hollywood who enjoys magick, art, music, clothes, shoes, and other beautiful women. But she does have the out-going, sexually charged personality necessary to promote a sci-fi book to a hoard of nerds young and old. With the addition of a website and MySpace page, she has now reached out of the incorporeal, and into the pages (and dirty, dirty thoughts) of men everywhere.
The book in question, Moon Age Daydream, is a literary novel written in the science-fiction argot from the point of view of a young male using the futuristic slang of his day, similar to how Nadsat was deftly employed in A Clockwork Orange.
Dabbling in the occult, the narrator must unravel the mystery of his missing ex-girlfriend while struggling with his current obsessions: a fiery young female who will do anything for an extra buck and an artificial intelligence (Isabelle, inspired by none other than Izabael) with a jealous streak as cold and wide as a space highway. Not your usual boy meets girl story, but quite clever in the boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wants to find girl but is entranced by another girl manner…and with interesting resolve.
For being his first book, author Shawn von Dragen has created quite a daunting task for himself: not only writing a clever, well-defined story; but also creating a vernacular for our narrator to incorporate throughout. Any schlomo can put together a story, publish it, and call himself a writer…but a storyteller creates the world around the story and envelops the reader within.
Von Dragen successfully tells the story, and creates the universe around it. Presenting it from the standpoint of our humble narrator, written in a language from the not-so-distant future really adds to the believability and timelessness of the story. All-in-all, a good read, especially for those of us who enjoy sci-fi but aren’t fluent in Klingon.
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