What do you think?
Rate this book
Close Your Eyes
Language is a virus. Open this book. Read the words. Feel them infect you. Identity is a disease. Flip the pages. Stay up all night. Watch it transform you. You cannot deny it. You cannot close your eyes and shut out the changes. You know you want to. You really want to. But it’s too late. You can’t.
Critically acclaimed author of weird fiction Paul Jessup sends puppets to speak and fight for their masters. Welcome to a far future universe that stretches the imagination to breaking, where a ragtag crew of post-human scavengers rage and love on a small ship in the outer reaches of space, and moon-sized asylums trap the unwary in a labyrinth of experimentation in both identity and sanity.
Welcome to Close Your Eyes , a mind expanding surrealistic space opera that not only includes the out-of-print classic Open Your Eyes, but takes it to whole new level in a much awaited sequel.
Go ahead. Pick it up. Read it. Let it infect you.
Critically acclaimed author of weird fiction Paul Jessup sends puppets to speak and fight for their masters. Welcome to a far future universe that stretches the imagination to breaking, where a ragtag crew of post-human scavengers rage and love on a small ship in the outer reaches of space, and moon-sized asylums trap the unwary in a labyrinth of experimentation in both identity and sanity.
Welcome to Close Your Eyes , a mind expanding surrealistic space opera that not only includes the out-of-print classic Open Your Eyes, but takes it to whole new level in a much awaited sequel.
Go ahead. Pick it up. Read it. Let it infect you.
- GenresScience Fiction
228 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 12, 2018
6 people are currently reading
75 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
July 14, 2018
This is a science fiction novel in Gothic horror style featuring Victorian-steampunkish human/machine hybrids. It also probably qualifies as fitting into the "bizarro" genre. Initially, I thought Close Your Eyes had an appealing grim, poetic atmosphere. But as the book dragged on, it far overstayed its welcome. The writing style went from atmospheric embellishment to a goth teen writing bad poetry in his bedroom while cutting himself. Close Your Eyes felt like wading through molasses of words by the second half. Boring despite the extreme weirdness. Not my style.
Note: I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Note: I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
July 2, 2018
I received a copy to review. More art than novel. Creative SF writing set in the far distant future in which language is an invading virus, and dolls are avatars. It was a difficult book to review, as on the one hand the writing is very good and creative (5 stars), but in terms of personal reading preferences, this was a difficult book (3 stars), especially the second half (which is a sequel novel to the first half of the book). I would guess that readers of SF anime graphic novels, such as Blame, would identify with the distant future universe created in this novel, but the world of the novel was far too distant for me to fully appreciate - but that's a reflection of me, not a creative author. A final comment - For me, what seemed out of place was the use of contemporary expletives. The constant use of f*ck seemed out of place in the futuristic feel of the book, and in my opinion, unnecessary.
June 16, 2018
Jessup has his own style of writing that is unique in all the books I’ve read. At times it’s punchy, direct, and almost Spartan in its usage, at other times it flows with the symmetry of poetry. As if his concept of linguistic viruses wasn’t enough, he uses language to great effect to heighten the more surreal aspects of his world.
Think of Close Your Eyes as sci-fi with a purpose. It would be easy to say the ship’s AI is reminiscent of HAL from 2001 or the linguistic virus as similar to Stephenson’s Snow Crash, but Close Your Eyes goes in different directions. Even if the idea that there is nothing new under the sun is true, that doesn’t mean existing things can’t be rearranged into new and exciting things.
All in all, a good read.
Read the full review on my blog
Think of Close Your Eyes as sci-fi with a purpose. It would be easy to say the ship’s AI is reminiscent of HAL from 2001 or the linguistic virus as similar to Stephenson’s Snow Crash, but Close Your Eyes goes in different directions. Even if the idea that there is nothing new under the sun is true, that doesn’t mean existing things can’t be rearranged into new and exciting things.
All in all, a good read.
Read the full review on my blog
July 6, 2018
Review forthcoming
May 1, 2019
Very confusing cyber punk space opera. I really had no clue what was happening.
December 12, 2018
Omg this is an awesome book! Or two novellas, actually. If you are a fan of weird, bizarre and sci fi, this is the book for you. Such imaginative situations and characters, I`ve rarely had the pleasure to be involved with. There is horrible suffering and beautiful bliss. The ending made me a bit teary eyed. Definite two thumbs up for this one. Anxiously awaiting more from this author.
July 21, 2019
This certainly starts with a bang; to be precise a supernova, in which the star in its death throes somehow impregnates a woman called Ekhi, apparently by means of light. Thereafter she is forced to pilot her own ship after shutting down its AI heart since it goes insane due to entropic breakdown of its programmes. She is found floating, naked, in the ship’s control centre - throughout the book these are named egia - by Mari, Hodei and Sugoi, scavengers from The Good Ship Lollipop. At this early point the text displayed an uncomfortably voyeuristic attitude towards Ekhi, embodied in the character of Hodei, who is also fascinated by a nude model in a stache of magazines he keeps. (Magazines? These digital days?) This fascination is later revealed to be because he has the essence of a woman, Iuski, hidden inside him.
Sugoi is Mari’s (very jealous) lover and resents, to the point of violence, any hint of interest in her by Hodei. Sugoi is a lumbering, almost inarticulate creature. With his propensity for violence it is difficult to see what, for Mari, his attraction might be. Then too, there seems to be little jeopardy. Biological repair organisms named thalna can restore to health a body damaged to a high degree. In a similar way robot-like mozorro keep the egias running “smooth and perfect”. Moreover each character contains within itself systems called patuek which “have the ability to store a mind in stasis and be transplanted into a healed, cloned body”.
The ship’s captain, Itsasu, has a frail withered body tethered to the ship’s control heart near the Ortzadar engine (found on the ruins of a moon) and its “bizarre wisdom culled from centuries of intelligence algorithms evolving and learning and storing information into complex data matrices”. She is on a long, 435 year, quest to find her husband but has kept this from the crew, never explaining “exactly why they wandered the stars, stealing from dead cities and spun-down relics of starships”.
None of these are sympathetic characters, not even Ekhi, who seems to be present only to kick-start the story and incubate the supernova’s child. This problem of empathy is exacerbated by Jessup’s use of short, sometimes one word sentences. This is a technique best used sparingly, rather than being endemic.
Jeopardy does come; in the shape of pirates of a sort whose main weapon seems to be language; “‘We would whisper the word once, just once, and your mind would become a slave to this foreign tongue, this alien thought device.’” “That language is a giant looming inside of my mind. Hunting me.” “With the new language came a new being, a hive mind that commanded each and every one of them.” This enemy is connected with the sakre, which can drive human minds to destruction.
The novel is divided into two “books” titled “Open Your Eyes” and “Close Your Mouth” both with five Acts and separated by an Intermission. The birth of the child of the supernova (“I am Arigia. I am the dreams of humanity, the lands of the stars. I am the coupling between all and everything. I float, I am free. And I sing this ship to life. The port to life. I sing the sorrow song at the end of the universe, at the end of time,”) ends the first section. This seems to presage Arigia’s subsequent importance but she is all but totally absent from Book II wherein a wheelchair bound Isatsu, accompanied by Mari (now turned into a bird,) and Isatsu’s husband Ortzi - or, rather his consciousness contained within a skull - wander a labyrinth loosely drawn from the minotaur legend through a landscape of severed heads, while trying to escape the clutches of a bear-like creature called Basa and his diminutive controller La whose driving force seems to be, “Cover them in words. Take their heads. Fill with eggs.”
It all presents as just a little bonkers. Add in some purple-skinned, elephant-headed creatures for seasoning.
Bonkers is fine, but a human story to hang on to while we’re at it, characters whose fates the reader might care about, would help the medicine go down. If SF ideas for the sake of SF ideas do it for you then give this a go. Those who prefer their senses and sensibilities to be engaged should look elsewhere.
Sugoi is Mari’s (very jealous) lover and resents, to the point of violence, any hint of interest in her by Hodei. Sugoi is a lumbering, almost inarticulate creature. With his propensity for violence it is difficult to see what, for Mari, his attraction might be. Then too, there seems to be little jeopardy. Biological repair organisms named thalna can restore to health a body damaged to a high degree. In a similar way robot-like mozorro keep the egias running “smooth and perfect”. Moreover each character contains within itself systems called patuek which “have the ability to store a mind in stasis and be transplanted into a healed, cloned body”.
The ship’s captain, Itsasu, has a frail withered body tethered to the ship’s control heart near the Ortzadar engine (found on the ruins of a moon) and its “bizarre wisdom culled from centuries of intelligence algorithms evolving and learning and storing information into complex data matrices”. She is on a long, 435 year, quest to find her husband but has kept this from the crew, never explaining “exactly why they wandered the stars, stealing from dead cities and spun-down relics of starships”.
None of these are sympathetic characters, not even Ekhi, who seems to be present only to kick-start the story and incubate the supernova’s child. This problem of empathy is exacerbated by Jessup’s use of short, sometimes one word sentences. This is a technique best used sparingly, rather than being endemic.
Jeopardy does come; in the shape of pirates of a sort whose main weapon seems to be language; “‘We would whisper the word once, just once, and your mind would become a slave to this foreign tongue, this alien thought device.’” “That language is a giant looming inside of my mind. Hunting me.” “With the new language came a new being, a hive mind that commanded each and every one of them.” This enemy is connected with the sakre, which can drive human minds to destruction.
The novel is divided into two “books” titled “Open Your Eyes” and “Close Your Mouth” both with five Acts and separated by an Intermission. The birth of the child of the supernova (“I am Arigia. I am the dreams of humanity, the lands of the stars. I am the coupling between all and everything. I float, I am free. And I sing this ship to life. The port to life. I sing the sorrow song at the end of the universe, at the end of time,”) ends the first section. This seems to presage Arigia’s subsequent importance but she is all but totally absent from Book II wherein a wheelchair bound Isatsu, accompanied by Mari (now turned into a bird,) and Isatsu’s husband Ortzi - or, rather his consciousness contained within a skull - wander a labyrinth loosely drawn from the minotaur legend through a landscape of severed heads, while trying to escape the clutches of a bear-like creature called Basa and his diminutive controller La whose driving force seems to be, “Cover them in words. Take their heads. Fill with eggs.”
It all presents as just a little bonkers. Add in some purple-skinned, elephant-headed creatures for seasoning.
Bonkers is fine, but a human story to hang on to while we’re at it, characters whose fates the reader might care about, would help the medicine go down. If SF ideas for the sake of SF ideas do it for you then give this a go. Those who prefer their senses and sensibilities to be engaged should look elsewhere.
September 8, 2020
this book had a LOT of wasted potential... so many interesting concepts, but none of them executed satisfactorily. book 2 was a vast improvement from book 1 – you can tell it was written years later and the author had developed his own style much further – but i was still left disappointed by the end.
August 22, 2019
*NOTE* I was given a free copy of this ebook by the publisher for an honest review
This was not an easy book to read. The first half, 'Open your Eyes' started oddly, but I fell into the story and was interested in what was happening. Not many books would start with "Her lover was a supernova." and actually mean a supernova for real (I think). It was all a bit confusing.
A brief synopsis - a woman is found by a diverse group of humanoid-ish space explorers as they are travelling in search of something. Each crew member has a different purpose for being there, and the ship itself is alive and has its own purpose. You eventually find out what everyone wants, and you find out (kind of) what happened to Ekhi, the woman they found. There is also a dead language that is actually a infectious virus that comes into play. The language of this novel is quite dense and flowery - except for the dialog, which seemed to be a bit simplistic to me.
The second half, 'Close your Mouth' takes place a long time after the events of the first half, and it was even more confusing to me, as some of the same characters appear, but seem to have different personalities and/or motivations.
Again, the language was a bit dense and flowery - almost random seeming poetry at times. I struggled to understand what was going on, and that pulled me out of the story somewhat and made me not care that much.
Overall, it was interesting and I do not regret reading the story, but I don't think that I will want to revisit this universe - at least not for quite some time.
This was not an easy book to read. The first half, 'Open your Eyes' started oddly, but I fell into the story and was interested in what was happening. Not many books would start with "Her lover was a supernova." and actually mean a supernova for real (I think). It was all a bit confusing.
A brief synopsis - a woman is found by a diverse group of humanoid-ish space explorers as they are travelling in search of something. Each crew member has a different purpose for being there, and the ship itself is alive and has its own purpose. You eventually find out what everyone wants, and you find out (kind of) what happened to Ekhi, the woman they found. There is also a dead language that is actually a infectious virus that comes into play. The language of this novel is quite dense and flowery - except for the dialog, which seemed to be a bit simplistic to me.
The second half, 'Close your Mouth' takes place a long time after the events of the first half, and it was even more confusing to me, as some of the same characters appear, but seem to have different personalities and/or motivations.
Again, the language was a bit dense and flowery - almost random seeming poetry at times. I struggled to understand what was going on, and that pulled me out of the story somewhat and made me not care that much.
Overall, it was interesting and I do not regret reading the story, but I don't think that I will want to revisit this universe - at least not for quite some time.
April 18, 2022
You have never read anything like this! Victorian-steampunk-body horror-gothic-space opera. Weird as shit and brilliant.
May 27, 2019
Talking bears. Really weird.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews