BEST—REVIEW—EVER!

It was almost a decade ago when I had coffee in Edinburgh with Colin Kerris, the young man who wrote this review. This from GoodReads, a website devoted to books. 

When reading this review, please imagine it being spoken in a thick Scottish brogue.

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The Unseen! is a story about WALKING! Walking into WILDERNESS! Walking into canyons. Walking into space. Walking into time. Walking alone into the cold dark spaces hidden from the sun. Walking into the sheltered spaces between where no one goes. Walking into memories unrememberable, irretrievable. Walking into the dead of night at 3am. Walking into history. But maybe - some will go. Some should not. WILL you walk with me, traveller, into the old dead heart of time? Into the KNOWN unknown that AWAITS us all? DARE you traverse the very tightrope walk of existence? One second alive, full of joy... the next, DOOMED? FEAR YE, TRAVELER!! LOOK YE WELL, FOR THIS IS... The Unseen!

Well anyway... after that preposterous Kirby-esque intro... I did actually have every full intention of actually talking about Mike Clelland's novel, The Unseen...

So as a person eternally fascinated with paranormal/UFO/alien stuff, I was already fairly familiar with Mike's previous work—his podcast Hidden Experience and of course, his two books about owls (spoiler alert: they're not really books about owls) so I was looking forward to his fiction debut.

The Unseen is the story of John, formerly Daniel, a fairly successful artist. A keen outdoorsman who abandons his reasonably decent life to trek out into the desert in search of... what? A new life? Love? Redemption? Answers about life, the universe and everything? The strange experiences in his life he cannot reconcile? 

In a small town in the desert, a resurrected John finds a new life away from the old, working in a cafe. However, asleep in the canyon at night, he is visited by a woman he can never forget and becomes involved in a drama that lives between the earth and the sky...

(random note... the cafe John finds employment in weirdly reminded me very much of a similar place where I worked a few years back, in a fairly isolated backwoods part of Central Scotland. Although it's never been my experience that you're ever allowed to wander off to do other things while on duty—his boss is a hugely generous employer!)

There is an amazing bit of business with a t-shirt which is sort of a twist/reveal/spoiler but... you may get it and it adds something incredible to the story. 

The Unseen is a book that both IS and ISN'T about aliens and/or any sort of paranormal phenomena.

Also... it's really, really good.

Whitley Strieber couldn't write this book. (Although I suspect Whitley doesn't know what to put in a backpack) It is not exactly fast-paced or action-packed. There are slow moments where characters talk back and forth for ages... but for me it unfolded as if I was there. You hang on every word as everything is moving. Carefully and slowly revealing itself... like sunlight passing across a canyon. 

Maybe I'm biased as someone who is interested in all this stuff but—it comes to a comfortable conclusion that feels both hopeful and hopeless. If you know Mike at all from his previous work, you can really feel him channelling his whole life into this. It reminded me a bit of a book by David Halperin, Journal of a UFO Investigator from a few years back, which had a similar warmth and sadness for all those who look to the skies. 

find the book HERE