Luminarium Review

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Luminarium ReviewThis was an interesting novel. Deeper than I expected it to be. It takes a brave author to dive into the vast realm of spirituality and build a compelling story around it. Shakar has quite a flair for seeing things in a unique light. The prose is wickedly smart. For the most part I enjoyed that aspect of it.
But it's not going to be a good fit for everyone. It's not an easy read, in either the depth of the text or in length. It's not a hard science-fiction novel, but I think it will appeal to the same sort of reader (lots of hard-science concepts and related terminology).
It's difficult to say what this book is about because it's about so many things: the meaning of life, the role of religion, how or if science explains religion, and the metaphysical that can't be explained any other way. "Faith without ignorance." It also explores the FPS/MMO realm via Urth, a virtual reality simulation of the real world, a look at just how real a fake world can get (and therefore become to people).
On the surface, this novel chronicles Fred Brounian's life struggles following the loss of his company and his mysteriously comatose twin-brother. But it also examines the nature of the universe, the nature of reality. It spans many quasi-religious viewpoints over the course of Fred's spiritual discovery, exploring a host of different spiritual/psychological ideologies in subtle ways. Hinduism plays a major role, along with reiki.
On an intellectual level I liked this novel. I enjoyed his sessions in the NYU study. I found the parallels between neuroscience and commonly perceived spiritual experiences very interesting. The mysterious email thread starts off well but goes way too far out on a limb as far as suspension of disbelief goes, which is the case for the last third of the novel.
Good character development. I really liked Mira. Very disappointed that Shakar chose to perpetuate the notion women are attracted to men who stalk them though.
Unfortunately, the novel's entertainment value just wasn't there. It's written in a stream of consciousness way, which at times is rather distracting from what's actually happening in the book. I thought a bit too much emphasis was placed on spirituality, to the point where it felt forced and artificial. A few elements were too far-fetched.
I often found myself wondering where the story was going. It touches on a lot of things as Fred goes about his life, but it never feels like it goes anywhere. Things just seem to happen, ones that aren't particularly interesting either. The length of the book is partly to blame. I'd estimate it's 150,000+ words. With the exception of one plot thread, nothing really happens in the book. Since this is a l-o-n-g book, there's really no excuse. Like a true spiritual journey, it's rather aimless and fairly boring.
In conclusion: deep on intellect but not much of a page-turner. The total package of the novel didn't do much to interest me. It was very hard to stick with it because I didn't care what was happening. I would've rather read a non-fiction book on the same subject.Luminarium OverviewFred Brounian and his twin brother, George, were once co-CEOs of a burgeoning New York City software company devoted to the creation of utopian virtual worlds. Now, in the summer of 2006, as two wars rage and the fifth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, George has fallen into a coma, control of the company has been wrenched away by a military contracting conglomerate, and Fred has moved back in with his parents. Broke and alone, he's led by an attractive woman, Mira, into a neurological study promising to give him "peak" experiences and a newfound spiritual outlook on life. As the study progresses, lines between the subject and the experimenter blur, and reality becomes increasingly porous. Meanwhile, Fred finds himself caught up in what seems at first a cruel prank: a series of bizarre emails and texts that purport to be from his comatose brother. Moving between the research hospitals of Manhattan, the streets of a meticulously planned Florida city, the neighborhoods of Brooklyn and the uncanny, immersive worlds of urban disaster simulation; threading through military listserv geek-speak, Hindu cosmology, the maxims of outmoded self-help books and the latest neuroscientific breakthroughs, Luminarium is a brilliant examination of the way we live now, a novel that's as much about the role technology and spirituality play in shaping our reality as it is about the undying bond between brothers, and the redemptive possibilities of love."Luminarium is dizzyingly smart and provocative, exploring as it does the state of the present, of technology, of what is real and what is ephemeral. But the thing that separates Luminarium from other books that discuss avatars, virtual reality and the like is that Alex Shakar is committed throughout with trying, relentlessly, to flat-out explain the meaning of life. This book is funny, and soulful, and very sad, but so intellectually invigorating that you'll want to read it twice." — Dave Eggers "This fascinating, hilarious novel, though set in the past, is the story of the future: technology has outlapped us, reality is blinking on and off like a bad wireless connection, the ones we love are nearby in one sense, but far away in another. Yet at the book's galloping heart, it's the story of what one man is willing to go through to find—in our crowded, second-rate space—something like faith. This novel is sharp, original, and full of energy—obviously the work of a brilliant mind." — Deb Olin Unferth, author of Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War

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