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I Will Rise
Charles is an ugly, potbellied, acne-scarred line chef with a deformed left hand that triggers massive seizures. After a run-in with a cop and his dog, Charles is thrust into death, only to be risen again with the newfound ability to kill people simply by touching them.
His mission, of course, is to annihilate the human race.
Annabelle is a fiery redhead, physically blind, with a serious appetite for apocalyptic mayhem. She is charged with guiding and orchestrating Charles on his journey to “save” humanity.
Relishing the opportunity to make the world suffer, Charles embraces his bloody destiny, but as his killing touch spreads death and destruction, self-doubt and self-loathing plague him as he falls for Annabelle.
As his feelings deepen, Charles wonders if he has been shunned by society for most of his existence or if his loneliness is a by-product of his own ignorance. As realization flowers and regrets begin to surface, he must make a choice between the screams of the dead and the pleas of the living.
Does all of humanity really deserve to perish at his hands? Is it too late for Charles to defy death, escape meat-cleaver-wielding pro-human maniacs, prevent zombie hordes from rising, and stop the cataclysmic forces raging inside his body?
Or does the human virus need to be destroyed once and for all?
His mission, of course, is to annihilate the human race.
Annabelle is a fiery redhead, physically blind, with a serious appetite for apocalyptic mayhem. She is charged with guiding and orchestrating Charles on his journey to “save” humanity.
Relishing the opportunity to make the world suffer, Charles embraces his bloody destiny, but as his killing touch spreads death and destruction, self-doubt and self-loathing plague him as he falls for Annabelle.
As his feelings deepen, Charles wonders if he has been shunned by society for most of his existence or if his loneliness is a by-product of his own ignorance. As realization flowers and regrets begin to surface, he must make a choice between the screams of the dead and the pleas of the living.
Does all of humanity really deserve to perish at his hands? Is it too late for Charles to defy death, escape meat-cleaver-wielding pro-human maniacs, prevent zombie hordes from rising, and stop the cataclysmic forces raging inside his body?
Or does the human virus need to be destroyed once and for all?
- GenresHorror
360 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
2 people are currently reading
48 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 10, 2008
"I Will Rise" is a strange tale from the beginning. The prose is a jarring mix of common, even gutter slang ("super cool", "Nothing super wrong", "soooo") and sheer weight ("ferocity of my utterance"), as if the writer is undecided on his own voice. The voice wavers between a musing reminiscence and addressing the reader in a more conversational tone.
If there wasn't a sense of repulsion from this almost-anti hero from the beginning the narrator's well described efforts to keep himself from masturbating through body-funk visualization in the first chapter should be enough. By the end of the first chapter we know that Charlie is a socially awkward, fat, oily, ugly man who is a victim of the media and society and of the parents who casually called him "a fucking nut job". He fakes seizures and steals, but won't let himself be sexually aroused because God is watching.
Calvillo's voice, the overwhelming main building block of the book, is intense and disarming. Certainly dispirited readers will find much to connect with. But the flow of thought style is distracting, obscuring a plot that doesn't begin until 50 pages in with a half hearted attempt at poisoning people followed by a confusing death and rebirth into being the reformer of mankind. There's a disassembled feel to the story, an expanded, and at times out of control version, of the feel of the cult movie Fight Club. "I Will Rise" absolutely captures the tilting, half-insane, anarchist feel but with more rawness and less refinement.
If readers can accept the hallucinations and ranting flow of thought style in this dizzying tale of horror and social degradation they'll likely list "I Will Rise" as one of their favorites, but definitely as one of the most memorable books they've ever read.
I Will Rise is available in print at major bookstores or ebook form from Lachesis Publishing
If there wasn't a sense of repulsion from this almost-anti hero from the beginning the narrator's well described efforts to keep himself from masturbating through body-funk visualization in the first chapter should be enough. By the end of the first chapter we know that Charlie is a socially awkward, fat, oily, ugly man who is a victim of the media and society and of the parents who casually called him "a fucking nut job". He fakes seizures and steals, but won't let himself be sexually aroused because God is watching.
Calvillo's voice, the overwhelming main building block of the book, is intense and disarming. Certainly dispirited readers will find much to connect with. But the flow of thought style is distracting, obscuring a plot that doesn't begin until 50 pages in with a half hearted attempt at poisoning people followed by a confusing death and rebirth into being the reformer of mankind. There's a disassembled feel to the story, an expanded, and at times out of control version, of the feel of the cult movie Fight Club. "I Will Rise" absolutely captures the tilting, half-insane, anarchist feel but with more rawness and less refinement.
If readers can accept the hallucinations and ranting flow of thought style in this dizzying tale of horror and social degradation they'll likely list "I Will Rise" as one of their favorites, but definitely as one of the most memorable books they've ever read.
I Will Rise is available in print at major bookstores or ebook form from Lachesis Publishing
June 2, 2008
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.
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.
April 29, 2013
For Michael, we miss you, and here's a review I did of this book when it first came out:
A high school English teacher wrote this, no kidding. In all of my educational years growing up, from grades pre-thru-all-the-way-up-to-junior-college, I never knew a single teacher regardless of vocational discipline to write a novel like this.
His students must really dig him…..
And here again we have a first novel, this time fallen right smack dab into our favorite genre and the one I should be constantly dealing with in the first place, outright in-your-face kind of horror with plot devices and characters and situations that grab you by the balls or region thereof if you have not balls.
Bottom line: Charles, our main character who from first person narrates the tale, is one dude with wrenches thrown into the mechanics of his social life to the point he’s disciplined his private thoughts against even the temptation of masturbation. He’s just a joe with a shitass job and a clinically malfunctioned jittery hand until a confrontation with a police officer and his hound and the ghostly vision of a girl he encountered at a library suddenly play a part in that hand coming to life, its palm a black hole of fathomless vacuous suction with anyone it touches and, like a vacuum cleaner set on nightmare, it sucks the life right from you. A frickin’ dog gets swallowed up in it. And yet, all he has to do is touch you, and you’re dead in a couple days, and those who touch you are dead in just as much time. The girl from the library, as it turns out, is really a chubby blind girl in Arizona who appears to Charles in visions while she dreams, and in that vision she’s sexy and actually sees. She tells him a dreamer actually dreamt this world, and the dreamer is awakening and everyone must die to be saved…..or something like that…..and Charles is to purge this world relentlessly by killing everyone in it. But then there are the many people that dreamt of him doing so, and who fervently attempt to stop him. Not to mention, throughout his exploits to kill mankind, his face is all over the news. Ultimately, a popular televised psychic may be behind it all, but the only way Charles can find out the truth behind the possibly greater role he has to play is to continue down his path of global destruction and see what happens next.
Calvillo has this, his first novel, as well as an extremely impressive promotional campaign to launch him down a path to certain literary success, if he keeps this up. I love hot girls that drive me to kill and In 24 hours everyone you know will be dead! are splashed across business cards and related marketing material are good catch phrases, but do they measure up to all the hype?
You betcha. But I'm a redemption addict, and there are elements of the story and the character of Charles which render me unsympathetic to him; the focal point of firepower Calvillo directs towards us in first person with him should, I feel, lead him into a more palpable resolution. But all that shouldn't dissuade you from reading it, is just banter from me to the author. I think the reading public who digs horror will lap this stuff up.
Truly, its nonconformity, as Calvillo boasts as part of the sort of writing discipline he's utilized to describe how he writes in author bio blurbs, is indeed just that, and that's part of what makes this work special.
That, and, for an English teacher with a dark side, I Will Rise makes for a perfect addition to any library.
A high school English teacher wrote this, no kidding. In all of my educational years growing up, from grades pre-thru-all-the-way-up-to-junior-college, I never knew a single teacher regardless of vocational discipline to write a novel like this.
His students must really dig him…..
And here again we have a first novel, this time fallen right smack dab into our favorite genre and the one I should be constantly dealing with in the first place, outright in-your-face kind of horror with plot devices and characters and situations that grab you by the balls or region thereof if you have not balls.
Bottom line: Charles, our main character who from first person narrates the tale, is one dude with wrenches thrown into the mechanics of his social life to the point he’s disciplined his private thoughts against even the temptation of masturbation. He’s just a joe with a shitass job and a clinically malfunctioned jittery hand until a confrontation with a police officer and his hound and the ghostly vision of a girl he encountered at a library suddenly play a part in that hand coming to life, its palm a black hole of fathomless vacuous suction with anyone it touches and, like a vacuum cleaner set on nightmare, it sucks the life right from you. A frickin’ dog gets swallowed up in it. And yet, all he has to do is touch you, and you’re dead in a couple days, and those who touch you are dead in just as much time. The girl from the library, as it turns out, is really a chubby blind girl in Arizona who appears to Charles in visions while she dreams, and in that vision she’s sexy and actually sees. She tells him a dreamer actually dreamt this world, and the dreamer is awakening and everyone must die to be saved…..or something like that…..and Charles is to purge this world relentlessly by killing everyone in it. But then there are the many people that dreamt of him doing so, and who fervently attempt to stop him. Not to mention, throughout his exploits to kill mankind, his face is all over the news. Ultimately, a popular televised psychic may be behind it all, but the only way Charles can find out the truth behind the possibly greater role he has to play is to continue down his path of global destruction and see what happens next.
Calvillo has this, his first novel, as well as an extremely impressive promotional campaign to launch him down a path to certain literary success, if he keeps this up. I love hot girls that drive me to kill and In 24 hours everyone you know will be dead! are splashed across business cards and related marketing material are good catch phrases, but do they measure up to all the hype?
You betcha. But I'm a redemption addict, and there are elements of the story and the character of Charles which render me unsympathetic to him; the focal point of firepower Calvillo directs towards us in first person with him should, I feel, lead him into a more palpable resolution. But all that shouldn't dissuade you from reading it, is just banter from me to the author. I think the reading public who digs horror will lap this stuff up.
Truly, its nonconformity, as Calvillo boasts as part of the sort of writing discipline he's utilized to describe how he writes in author bio blurbs, is indeed just that, and that's part of what makes this work special.
That, and, for an English teacher with a dark side, I Will Rise makes for a perfect addition to any library.
September 14, 2011
In his brilliant debut novel, Michael Louis Calvillo tells the story of Charlie, a frustrated and disillusioned line chef who's just trying to fit into a world that he doesn't really like to begin with. He was born with a strange growth on the palm of his hand and eventually realizes that he can bring death just by touching someone. He also that his "purpose" is to destroy humanity. I don't want to give away too much plot, so i'll just say that the writing was superb, and the idea is very original. Like a few others said, it does start off kinda slowly, but if you stick with it you'll get your reward at the end. If you're looking for something other than the ordinary zombie, vampire, ghoust, etc, stories you should definitely give this one a try.
January 12, 2011
I have interacted with the author through e-mail and message boards and thought he was a nice guy. Authors who I really respect talked highly of this novel. I maybe alone in this opinion,but i was disappointed by this book. I had high hopes but could not get into this book at all. It seemed to try way to hard to be fight club, but it lacked the sharp wit of Chucky P.
February 1, 2008
Well, this is my book so I am a bit biased. What did you think of it?
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews