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The Greatest Whole
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 6, 2024
For those of you who might not know, or any of you who know but haven’t yet, you should definitely read the book “The Greatest Whole” by King Khan, an excellent collection of fiction from a truly renaissance artist. I absolutely hate to use that phrase “renaissance artist” because of how easily it’s thrown around, but when you take in all of the art forms that King Khan has dived into and done so, so beautifully, that phrase, in its truest form, fits so well.
The two shorter stories to begin the book show a real depth in knowledge of cultural and historical situations that most people are in the dark about. They also show a passion to make people aware of the unfortunate and neglected; those on the outskirts of society.
The main, and title story, is vastly different and epic in scope. Let’s say you take the scale of the mythological of Tolkien’s “The Silmarillion”, remove the bloated and academic sterility, add the sorted and perverse science fiction of WS Burroughs, throw in a bit of factual data to strengthen the mythical aspect, not unlike Werner Herzog’s Fata Morgana, and you begin to see what I see in the book. No, really, it’s that good. And I love the fact that the author leaves it up to the reader to draw their own conclusion of the righteousness or amorality of the characters and their causes. Impressive. And the closing of the book, dedicated to Marshall Allen, is the most delicious icing on the cake you’ll ever taste. “The stars that do twinkle.”
The two shorter stories to begin the book show a real depth in knowledge of cultural and historical situations that most people are in the dark about. They also show a passion to make people aware of the unfortunate and neglected; those on the outskirts of society.
The main, and title story, is vastly different and epic in scope. Let’s say you take the scale of the mythological of Tolkien’s “The Silmarillion”, remove the bloated and academic sterility, add the sorted and perverse science fiction of WS Burroughs, throw in a bit of factual data to strengthen the mythical aspect, not unlike Werner Herzog’s Fata Morgana, and you begin to see what I see in the book. No, really, it’s that good. And I love the fact that the author leaves it up to the reader to draw their own conclusion of the righteousness or amorality of the characters and their causes. Impressive. And the closing of the book, dedicated to Marshall Allen, is the most delicious icing on the cake you’ll ever taste. “The stars that do twinkle.”
January 6, 2025
A very snazzy book with great illustrations scattered throughout. Two short stories plus a novella. The writing style is a disjointed stream of consciousness. This works better for the short stories, but not so well for the novella. Too many awkward shifts in the story and many parts just felt frivolous and tacked on. The ending didn't jive at all with the rest of the story and was very disappointing.
There's a lot of adult content that is maybe supposed to be shocking? To some degree I liked it just because so few authors are willing to add that amount of sexuality to their novels. Unfortunately, it's all pretty shallow. Now that I think about it, the whole book is fairly shallow. There's no depth. I was never really engaged either.
I did find certain passages interesting from a writing standpoint, but it's not really enough to carry this work. I think some readers would be wowed by the author "breaking the rules" of good writing, but it's been done before and done better.
There's a lot of adult content that is maybe supposed to be shocking? To some degree I liked it just because so few authors are willing to add that amount of sexuality to their novels. Unfortunately, it's all pretty shallow. Now that I think about it, the whole book is fairly shallow. There's no depth. I was never really engaged either.
I did find certain passages interesting from a writing standpoint, but it's not really enough to carry this work. I think some readers would be wowed by the author "breaking the rules" of good writing, but it's been done before and done better.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews