"Wild"

By Cheryl Strayed

Along a dusty worn path, Cheryl Strayed begins the journey of a lifetime.  She has set out on the Pacific Crest Trail, aiming to walk up through California's varied geographical landscape and in a matter of months, blistered, bloody and borne anew, she will cross into Oregon.  This is the story behind the biography, "Wild."
After suffering the loss of her mother, Strayed finds herself estranged from her former self.  In her devastation, she forfeits everything- her marriage, her jobs, and her very self.  She experiments with drugs and casual sex to numb the pain that aches within her, until one day, on a routine trip to a store, she discovers a book that worms its way down inside her, unassumingly eating away at her cancerous grief.  She becomes inspired to hike for over a thousand miles on the Pacific Crest Trail in the hopes of rediscovering who she is.  On the trail, she pushes herself to her very limits, risking life and limb with every painful step.  And somewhere amongst the forests and rivers she conquers, she discovers what she lost.
"Wild" is this journey seen through her own eyes and experienced with her own overworked body.  She deftly details each excruciating experience with such vivid specificity, that at times, I felt myself wince and reach for my foot, expecting to see a blackened toenail.  At times I wondered what could possess someone to purposely put themselves through such hardship.  But then again, I have never lost a parent, and one never really knows how they will react to the cruel curve balls that life throws at them.  It's this that made me reach for page after page; to discover what one's reaction would be when faced with such a personal loss.
During her hike, Strayed repeatedly insists on her novice hiker status.   As the reader, I am able to see why.  Though she kept a copy of of The Pacific Crest Trail, Volume 1: California with her, she seemed constantly surprised at the geographical and weather changes.  This lack of expertise is apparent in her packing as well.  Her pack is so burdened with non essentials and clutter, she nearly breaks her back and ankles hauling it for hundreds of miles.
While her oversight is understandable to most of us non-hikers, she does possess some skill.  She describes her past experiences with camping and hiking, practically living the frontier-life with her mother and stepfather and siblings.  This creates an odd imbalance in which the reader is torn between believing her insistence that she's untrained, and yet, she possesses more skills than a real layman would.
The benefit of a biography is also it's curse.  Rather than a fictitious character, Strayed puts herself front and center to be commented on and judged.  But it also takes someone else's real-life story to force the reader to look inward at themselves, and wonder what they're stories might be.  In Strayed's case, "Wild" represented every aspect of her: her tumultuous past, her agonizing present, and the unseen future that laid ahead of her.  She managed to conquer her life story and has now left an indelible mark on the trail.

"The Northern Star: Civil War"

By Mike Gullickson

A bleak sky covers the quiet streets, abandoned by the citizens who have replaced the physical world in favor of the exciting and endlessly possible virtual reality.  In the distance, bright white and fiery oranges interrupt the yellow horizon, a battle ensuing between the monsters of technology, the Goliaths of the modern age: the Tank Majors.

Mike Gullickson masterfully delivers a world where the last remnants of natural resources are drying up, cyberspace is pervasive and powerful, and bodies are turned into weapons.  The horror is not in the fantastic future of far away, but rather realistic views of what’s possible just down the road.

In this next chapter of “The Northern Star” series, Tank Major John Raimey, the hulking mechanical man capable of leveling buildings and withstanding missile blasts, returns to finish the battle that began years ago.  Yet it is the war he wages with himself, fighting with the guilt of the choices of his past, that he shows his remaining human vulnerability.  By the gift of near invincibility, he has sacrificed the life of his wife and the love of his estranged daughter, Vanessa, who has now grown up under the supervision of Dr. Evan Lindo, the pioneer in the creation of the first bionic soldiers, including Raimey himself.  

Through him, we meet the major players of this newfound technologically advanced society, including Cynthia Revo, the mastermind behind the development of the Mindlink, a mental communicator and server that connects all human minds so completely that people are capable of existing online, and the founder of the company MindCorps, which has singlehandedly becoming the source of modern existence.  Such power becomes irresistible to Evan, and by devising alternative uses of the technology, he finds it possible to integrate the personalities of others into himself by melding their minds, destroying who they once were, so all that remains is Evan.  Soon, as the war between the Coalition, consisting of the U.S., the E.U. and China, and the Western Curse, a terrorist group, intensifies, and Lindo’s control strengthens, he realizes that it is through the possession of the virtual, rather than the physical world, that global domination can be his. 

This is a world that is both unrecognizable and yet oddly familiar- the greed for power and the thirst for newer, more evolved technology is a reality that Gullickson expertly weaves in his novel.  In the ultimate battle of wills against minds, brute strength against superior weaponry, heart against head, the fate of the future hangs in the balance.  Amidst this harsh impersonal landscape of nodes and circuits, Gullickson portrays the interpersonal relationships between characters with care and compassion, underlining the profound importance of human connection, above all others.