C..,C..,C..,Crazy (K-Pax II: On A Beam Of Light - Gene Brewer)

Member Name: zoe_page_1

Product:	K-Pax II: On A Beam Of Light - Gene Brewer
Date:	05/09/02 (2226 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: interesting, well written

Disadvantages: too much repitition from book one

In a nutshell, crazy man thinks he’s an alien. Crazy doctor thinks crazy man is not really an alien but is instead a different crazy man. Lots of craziness ensues.

Imagine waking up one day, with an idea for a book. Then imagine, writing the book and watching it become successful almost over night – so successful that not only does it sell a great number of copies, but the film rights are snapped up just like that. Wanting to cash in just a bit more on the success, it’s not surprising that the word “sequel” might spring to mind.

K-Pax 2 is, in some ways, just K-Pax with a 2 stuck on the end. The main characters are the same – prot, Robert, Dr Brewer and family, the staff at the Manhattan Psychiatric Institute. Some of the background faces remain, and some have moved on and been replaced by new people, just as you’d expect after five years have passed. The general principles haven’t changed in the slightest - prot, back once more from a trip to K-PAX (his home planet and a far more desirable place to live than smelly old EARTH) is still claiming to be prot, the being from another world. Dr Brewer, one of the head honchos at the Institute is still intent on proving that he isn’t. This time, thought, Dr Brewer gets a bit deeper inside prot’s mind, uncovering some nasty goings on of the child abuse and murder variety. Brewer gets Robert, prot’s alter ego, to make more and more appearances, and while the first book discussed Brewer’s relationship with his father (which tied in with his treatment of prot), this one changes the focus to his son, a medical student (whose presence in turn relates to his handling of Robert). Confused? Don’t be. The book is easy to follow, I just don’t have my best writing cap on today.

While the overall book isn’t bad, some aspects of the story don’t quite click. For example, though I’m not a psychologist, I do th
ink that over a course of 5 years, patients might come along who would be just as odd in their own little ways as prot. And yet, on the day he “returns” (just when he promised he would half a decade earlier), Brewer is practically sitting there waiting, with nothing to do but see to him. At times too, the book seems almost padded out, for example with tales of the Institute director’s strange wife who never goes out and who eventually dies. It just didn’t seem to fit into the story at any point, apart from providing an utterly un-connected chapter towards the end where the cremation takes place.

I received this book for my birthday (hurray for Amazon wishlists and 3-for-2s at Waterstones) and read it during one of the few days I was in the UK over summer. It was an interesting read but a little disappointing because the story didn’t really seem to go anywhere. It’s well written though, and if you hadn’t read the first book, it wouldn’t really be a problem. Indeed it might be better, because the ideas wouldn’t seem so stale. The book poses a lot of questions (although many of these are duplicates of those presented in book one of the trilogy) and at the end many remain unanswered. In some ways it’s an excellent example of the problems why sequels – they just can’t generate the same excitement as originals, nor keep the momentum going.

When I got to the end I did feel a bit cheated because it is so similar to the original, but that being said, I still want to read the final book in the trilogy when it’s published. Just like prot’s friends on EARTH, I ‘m starting to believe there will always be something better out there.

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K-Pax 2 – On A Beam Of Light by Gene Brewer

RRP £6.99

272 pages

Published by Bloomsbury

ISBN: 0747
553947

Summary: