Review: Transubstantiate, by Richard Thomas

There’s something deeply moving about seeing one of your dear friends finally reach his goal and get what he deserves. In this case, the friend in question happens to be Richard Thomas, author of the freshly released Transubstantiate.

The three of us at Rotten Leaves have been close to Richard for the past few years of our lives, trading words, stories and critiques. Our latest bonding experience came from watching a horror movie in a Denver hotel room, scared out of our wits. Manly. Very manly.

So when the word dropped that Richard’s baby would be published, Nik Korpon, Christopher Dwyer and I  were beyond thrilled. We watched the book grow over several months, reading multiple drafts, and it seemed only logical that we would scream our love for this novel as loud as we could.

So here it is, a three-way (not the dirty one) review of Richard Thomas’s debut novel.

Each fragment of the review focuses on each editor’s most favorite part(s) of the book, and we hope that the whole will make you order the novel as fast as humanly possible. You’ll regret it if you don’t. Trust a bunch of internet strangers on this.

Christopher Dwyer:

I was part of the initial writing workshop where Richard birthed the idea for TRANSUBSTANTIATE, so I have an interesting take on the novel that will differ from a first-time reader. It’s almost akin to watching one of your favorite bands in the studio for seven months, catching every cymbal crash, every broken vocal, every bit of guitar that gives you goosebumps. I knew what his approach was and I knew his weekly progress. But that’s not going to skew my opinion of the book, because as soon as he told me it was going to be published, I was equal parts thrilled and “Dude, I knew it was going to happen.”

My relationship with TRANSUBSTANTIATE began in late 2007, and I’ll be honest: I thought Richard was getting in a bit over his head. I know he won’t be angry with me with saying that because he’s like an older brother to me. I saw the amalgamation of voices, of styles, of themes that ordinarily couldn’t be connected in novel form…and I knew Richard had the attitude and the talent to pull it off.

Background out of the way, the thing that caught me the most about TRANSUBSTANTIATE was the way it felt like a mix of a vivid dream and tasteful nightmare. The population control experiment, the swagger of sexual prowess, the ultraviolence, the ethereal sweat dripping from every page…it all clicked for me. I remember telling Richard at some point last year that I wanted to see him write something linear, something a bit more straightforward. Even though I know he’s doing that with his next novel, what I didn’t tell him was that he mastered the multiple first-person point-of-view scheme with TRANSUBSTANTIATE. No one author is going to do it better and no other author should ever try.

And I think that’s what stands out about this novel. It’s not just well-written and beautiful. It’s the ambition behind the style, the scope; it’s the way Richard blends sci-fi with noir with thrills with horror with a cherry-tip drop of literary goodness…it would have been a fabulous story on its own, let alone with seven characters telling the story.

Nik Korpon:

One of the things that really struck me, probably about halfway through, was this seamless melding of multiple genres while still retaining what sycophants would say is a literary voice, meaning it’s a very well-written novel while still having the constant clicking of impending doom in the background. The whole Literary with a capital L versus genre argument seems to be getting more attention recently. Personally, I’ve always thought it ridiculous because, as TRANSUBSTANTIATE shows, you can have an exciting story while maintaining an acute attention to connotation, assonance, and sentence construction. The two categories are not mutually exclusive and with books like this, like Brian Evenson’s work, like Stephen Graham Jones’ work, coming out more frequently, I think that line of demarcation is thankfully becoming blurry.

One of my favorite parts of reading excellent fiction is the tiny details, the ones that give a glimpse at the man behind the curtain (or keyboard, in this case.) TRANSUBSTANTIATE has several of these. Besides the obvious drool-inducing Mustang, the minutiae of the letters give a number of tiny narrative threads to follow, countless background stories for the reader to mull. The Assigned letters are a perfect example of these.

In the same way that the details give you alternate threads, several word flourishes lend a much more dramatic, more epic feeling. Even phrases so small as ‘and so it goes’ send the cymbals crashing and trombones caterwauling in some sub-cranial John Williams score.

These few examples only skirt on the surface of the novel. The joy of it is reading and rereading, finding the gems I’d missed before. The reader half of my brain loves the textured feel of the narrative and prose. The writer half damns Richard for forcing me to up my game.

Axel Taiari:

“They say Jimmy made it out. But the postcards we get don’t seem real. Wish you were here and all that. Wherever here is. New York City, really? So I play along and wait for my break.”

Thus begins TRANSUBTANTIATE, and after that very first paragraph, the novel never slows down, never hints at even being able to. Richard’s prose catapults the reader through the story at breakneck speed while painting a mosaic of characters all trying to escape their personal Armageddon.

Official statements would have the novel fall under the category of a “neo-noir thriller” with “a slow reveal of plot”, I personally would call it a genre-bending Dark Towerishly LOST-infused car chase through a crowded street with the wheels on fire and a swarm of black choppers swooping in close, ready to blow everything up to Hell at any second. While heavy metal plays somewhere in the background.

And this is by far my favorite about TRANSUBSTANTIATE: while other authors could easily struggle with unleashing multiple points of view at such pace, Richard manages to make it all fit together, make sense, build characters, craft a vivid world, each new chapter giving you an additional piece of the puzzle, changing the whole picture, again and again, until the epilogue where everything falls into place and the reader is allowed to breathe once more.

But before that final showdown, you can expect a mental tilt-a-whirl, where a rogue computer quotes Charles Dickens, the stench of sex rises from the words, bullets fly, bones shatter, blood flows, dialogue cracks you up before slamming you down, and last but not least, love, too, yeah, it’s all in there, right on the pages for you to enjoy.

There. Now, what are you waiting for? A proper rating system? It goes something like this. 10 Rotten Stars out of a maximum 5.

Perhaps you need more reviews/blurbs? Yeah, enjoy.

“Transubstantiate is, is — it’s a visual: that 2001 baby opening its eyes in the monolith, but the monolith is shrouded in this story of loss and hope and identity, and encoded in the cadence of that story, if you listen close, is the genetic map with which to draw this impossible celestial infant, opening its eyes on the page, looking right into you.”

—Stephen Graham Jones
All The Beautiful Sinners, Bleed Into Me: A Book of Stories, Ledfeather, The Ones That Got Away

“Transubstantiate is an intricately-woven dystopian thriller, with every thread pulled tight. This is a solid debut from Richard Thomas.”
—Craig Clevenger
The Contortionist’s Handbook, Dermaphoria

“Richard Thomas’s Transubstantiate constructs a collection of voices that reveals a disturbing futuristic vision of terror and beauty. The novel’s island paradise, its imprisoned inhabitants, and the digital presence that works to control them, merge with ancient forces of rite and belief to create a surreal and devastating collage. This is a work that captures a world we almost know, its realities enough to raise an uneasy sense of potentiality.”
—Karen Brown
Pins and Needles, The Best American Short Stories 2008 (contributor)

“Told through various shadowy narrators, Transubstantiate is a trippy, intriguing novel that forecasts dystopia for our near-future. Thomas successfully blends several genres here—noir, literary fiction, sci-fi—all with abrasive, haunting language.”
—Joey Goebel
Torture the Artist, The Anomalies, Commonwealth

If you need more information, extracts and various goodies, here are all the relevant links.

Official TRANSUBTANTIATE website: http://www.transubstantiate.net

Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=272117108527&ref=ts

Richard’s website: http://whatdoesnotkillme.com/

Review at Bitten By Books: http://bittenbybooks.com/?p=26303