Special K and Demons

 I was actually kind of sad when I got a few pages into Christopher Pike's The Blind Mirror, since that about how long it took for me to remember I'd already read it years ago and hated it. 

I'm afraid time hasn't tempered my opinion of it much. 

When I was younger, I really enjoyed Pike's Young Adult fiction. Yes, he wrote a few stinkers, but some of it really influenced me back in the day. Then I found out he had a few adult novels, and they were universally stinkers. Well at least the two I know I've read have been. The other one, The Cold Ones, had similar themes to his YA fiction, but went darker, and it really didn't work well.

Then we have this one.

At the risk of major spoilers, the plot resolution involves people using Ketamine saturated in Ozone to artificially create out of body experiences, during which they can trade bodies with someone else who is also out of body. And then we find out demons are real. 

Which is sad, since the set up leading to this abject silliness is actually pretty interesting as a set up, as we have David returning from New York City to his hometown north of Santa Barbara with a novel to paint a cover for, and discovering a body on the beach at the same place he last saw his ex girlfriend Sienna. The feds and the local sheriff are sure the body belongs to Sienna, but Sienna keeps leaving phone messages for David. In the meantime, people from David's past keep dancing through his narrative, including Julie, a former cheerleader, who ends up seducing David. 

It gets silly fairly quickly, as the FBI agent investigating Sally (AKA Sienna's) death winds up confessing much that a real agent would never disclose, just to get the plodding plot moving a bit faster. We have the terrible novel David is reading that he's supposed to paint the cover for, which, while it does explain some of what's going on, seems mainly there so the author can show off his knowledge of the Platonic Year. Even if you buy into the book's central idea that everything going on is elaborate choreography, the level of coincidence really shakes believable circumstance. I mean, given some of the crap I've read, I'm willing to stretch my suspension of disbelief, but the sudden jump outside the bounds pretty much breaks it here. 

Eventually, I'll reread some his YA fiction again and get the horrible taste of this out of my mouth.