2 crampons out of 5

Veil bores.

You like that?  You see, a lot of the chapters in “Veil” start with the words “Veil dreams.”  So I’m making a referential joke to the book and bashing it at the same time.  It’s incredibly inventive of me and I bet no one ever ever has done it.  And if they have they probably smell like dingle doo.

I read a review for a Chesbro’s “Mongo” books a million years ago in a short-lived comic book magazine called “Combo.”  I scoured used book shops to find these little gems, assured that the series – about a dwarf detective – would fulfill the weirdo niche I was hoping to dedicate myself to.  I found one and proudly put it on my shelf.  I still haven’t read it.  But I picked up some more Chesbro books along the way at used stores here and there.  And so… Veil is my first.  I’m choosing not to judge his other works by it.

Veil Kendry was born “in the caul,” meaning still in or partially covered by the amniotic sac.  Apparently mystics attach a certain notoriety to caul births, believing the children to be omens of one type or another, or that they will grow to have psychic powers.  Kendry falls into the latter category.

“Veil” – the book – has that easy readability of an airport novel, but it gums it up with psychological musings on the nature of death and faith, which, it should be said, was apparently part of Chesbro’s shtick.  It also fails to fulfill its premise… either one of them.

Veil’s psychic gift is that he dreams when awake, and has trouble telling the difference between dreams and reality.  It could make for some wacky chapters, but by this point in the story, Veil’s in control of this.  So instead we get interrupted with chapters where “Veil dreams” that tell us some convuluted CIA shit from back in the day.  Veil is staying at an institute that studies death for the course of the book.  But they’re up to something a little more than that…  And then CIA ghosts start stalking Veil again…

But oh well.  That “little more” is truly only a little more, a pretty unexplored and vague little more, and the CIA spook nonsense reads like Macgyver.  I’m still interested to see what Chesbro was about, but the Mongo series was like a bamillion books and Veil only made it to book 2.  Maybe there was a reason.

With a cover like this, how can you not want to read it?

buy me?