Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1645569 in Books
• Published on: 2007-01-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 380 pages

Customer Reviews

An Investment Well Made
There is a point in Calvillo's I WILL RISE when the main character learns his hand harnesses a power that will bring death, either death in twenty-four hours time or almost instantaneously, depending on the duration of the touch, and to add to that concept, he is told he must touch EVERYBODY and destroy all of humanity.

This intriguing idea does not fully manifest itself early on. As a reader, I was not enthralled with the initial fifty pages--- I thought that the prose was too long and self-absorbed and concentrated too much on the foibles of humanity. In other words, I was ready to shout in an old lady's voice, "Where's the horror?"

Well, the horror comes folks. The horror comes from every direction like a series of avalanches that thoroughly slam your ignorant carcass to the earth. Calvillo does something daring for weird fiction, as well as horror fiction, and he also manages to wrangle popular fiction in the process.

My fascination for the characters' dilemmas grew by every turning page and all the prose that had once seemed too overwhelmed with free-thought shakes off the dust. In the last twenty pages the novel transforms into something vicious, dazzling, and infamous. This was an investment that paid one hundredfold. So much in fact, I'd like to reread the first fifty pages for more answers to all the strangled questions Calvillo leaves swinging from the gallows.

I give this five dripping black tentacles up in the air. Sky high.

More "weird and spooky" Needed!
Charlie works as a line chef in a seafood restaurant. Since birth, he's been plagued by an odd growth in the palm of his left hand and seizures that are apparently triggered there, rather than in the brain. He's unhappy with himself, with his job, with his life, and has turned inwards, hating himself and everyone else. Yet under his loathsome (at least by his own account) exterior, there's a man desperately seeking his place in the world. And if God won't give it to him, then he'll find it for himself.

For the first forty-five pages or so of this novel, nothing much happens. Instead of a plot, we're treated to an apparently endless stream-of-consciousness tirade from the first person narrator. There's some important information about page twenty-nine, where mystery woman Annabelle first appears, but apart from that, you won't lose much by skipping straight to page forty-seven and reading from there.

Even then, there's a lot of repetition, needless introspection and time-wasting what-shall-i-dos, but at least stuff is happening. Weird stuff. Spooky stuff. Almost weird and spooky enough to be worth tolerating the overwritten and at times turgid narration. But not quite.

In the hands of a more experienced writer and an editor with an endless supply of red pens, this story could have become something intriguing and perhaps genuinely frightening. At present, everything good about it is overwhelmed by what's bad.

[Reviewed by Debbie Moorhouse]

Never a dull page!!
Calvillo's book is excellent for the intellectual literary reader. It's captivating, ingenious, stimulating, and definitely a page turner. Calvillo is a young writer with veteran expertise in his writing skills. I recommend his book with five stars and two thumbs up!!