Book Review: The Wave by Walter Mosley

The Wave by Walter Mosley

Hardcover, First Edition, 209 pages

Published January 2006 by Warner Books (first published December 27th 2005)

Walter Mosley is an author who is known for his crime and mystery fiction. I had read a couple of his crime books back in the day and had no idea that he wrote science fiction until I heard about it on a podcast. I think it was Christopher Golden who mentioned his genre work on Three Guys with Beards. I am not sure I got the book he suggested as an example but I saw the The Wave on the shelf at the library so I jumped on it.

The Wave is a strange sci-fi novel, and I went into it totally cold not even reading the dust jacket before starting. I think the mystery is the best part of the novel, and for the first 80 pages I was super into it. The more I learned the less interesting the story was for me. The main character is Errol who is one year into a divorce, while he has a new love he is still fragile. The novel opens when he is getting a mysterious series of phone calls. "It's cold, Naked." He thinks he knows the voice and the mystery deepens when he hears more and more word. The voice that sounds like his father calls him by the nickname only he used. The reason that is strange is his father has been dead for nine years.

The voice wants help and asks him to come to the cemetery, the same one he had buried his father in nine years earlier. When he gets there he finds a young man, naked, and alone. Without basic skills the thing about this man he calls XT is he is a dead ringer for his father but younger. That mystery was masterfully set-up, with a raised eyebrow I was very interested in what was happening in the book. Once the details were laid out in the story I was not as interested in the concepts that drove the story.

Mosley tells a tale that doesn't have much science in it, the themes are more allegorical, which is odd for a book that is told with a minimalist prose style. The biggest weakness to mean are the characters like Errol whose is our voice is paper thin. the most interesting character is his resurrected father GT who falls out of the story for way to long. At this point we have to suffer through a government conspiracy story line that was far less interesting.

None the less I still enjoyed the book over all and want to read more Mosley. The characters and the general voice were interesting and carried me through. It is a short book that is overloaded with ideas. Without spoilers the concept mixes hippie like Gaia worship with supernatural elements that might have benefited from a wider scope.