I’m not going to claim to be some authoritative book reviewer, fully of wit and wisdom. I’m not particularly well-read, or overly intelligent, and most of the time read my Kindle books on the way to and from work, getting distracted on my commute by sirens and overly-jerky train operators and men who make great sock choices in the morning.

In fact, in college I claimed to be the worst-read English major ever (though with the way that universities have gone even more downhill since I graduated, I may not even be able to claim that title anymore).

With that in mind, my review should be taken lightly. Then again, if you’re the kind of reader who may be reading this, you probably take every review lightly because reviews are helpful only up until when they are…not helpful.

Anyway. This week I finished The Promethean by Owen Stanley, published by the delightful Castalia House.

Overall, I’m happy I read it. It was a fun read. I laughed. But next to Stanley’s first novel, The Missionaries, which was an absolute masterpiece of bone-deep satire, The Promethean felt flat and yet overly-animated, like a caricature. It never quite rose to the heights of The Missionaries, which somehow transcended laugh-out-loud humor.

The Missionaries deserves its own review, so I will stop now. It is perhaps unfair to compare the sophomore novel to its first-born predecessor, because the firstborn has an entire lifetime of experience behind it and the second, not so much. However, I will say that you should read The Missionaries first, because there are a few guest appearances that will carry more weight if you do. You might also want to read The Irrational Atheist as well, or at least be familiar with Vox Day’s opinion on religious wars through history.

The Promethean is the story of Frank Meadows, a mild-mannered robot, and his highly-successful creator Henry Hockenheimer, an American inventor/entrepreneur/lingerie merchant (talk about strange bedfellows!). Or rather, Henry had a dream to create the ultimate personal assistant, an android who could walk, talk and eat, pass for a human, but who could also act as a personal bodyguard and who was outfitted with sophisticated AI so as to provide expert advice in everything from Roman warfare to the current state of the Japanese eyeliner market. Frank is governed by Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, and yet — as we humans love to explore in our robot stories — has to grapple with the complexities of the human condition.

There’s a passage that I particularly love in which Frank reads a romance novel.

Despite the many LOL moments and alt-culture references, the core of the book is an exploration of Truth that unfolds as the story progresses. I won’t say much about it, because it is very much entwined with the unfolding plot, but a sentence stood out to me, because it rings of one of the tags I have here at Batfort: “the lie that tells the truth.”

While superficial deception might be necessary at times to further the cause of truth, one could only successfully deceive for such purposes if one had a thorough grasp of reality in the first place.

Sometimes, the point is the deeper truth rather than the trappings, which is why stories (which are lies) that point to bedrock truths (which is…Truth) are so helpful, and necessary.

That also leads us to one of the book’s weaker aspects: it felt unfocused. The eye of satire was turned upon entrepreneurship, and academia, and politics — but just superficially — that the satire never had a chance to settle in and develop. I want to make some sort of analogy to “young wine” here, but since I have very little experience with wine, I’l leave it to you to imagine.

Part of the reason that this bothered me so much is, like I mentioned in the title, very personal. I work in academia, and see much of the ridiculous posturing and genuflecting to diversity that goes on “behind the scenes.” And yes, it is utterly ridiculous. But the academic scenes in The Promethean were either too tame — not even heightened enough to count as satire — or felt completely made up, like someone guessing at what might have happened behind the scenes based on what he read in the news. Probably much more fun to read for someone who also reads about those crazy academics in the news, but to me it felt off.

Though the novel felt disjointed at times, all the disparate parts came together at the end for a very satisfying conclusion. The action thread of the story and the philosophical underpinnings came together at exactly the right time, and provided some catharsis that I dearly wish we could see in real life sometime soon.

Ultimately: hijinks, alt-culture references that are actually funny, and a worthy moral lesson make The Promethean worth a read.

Check it out: books by Owen Stanley