cover image Gamification/C-Monkeys

Gamification/C-Monkeys

Keith Hollihan. ChiZine Publications (HarperCollins Canada, Canadian dist.; Diamond Book Distributors, U.S. dist.), C$18.95/US$16.95 trade paper (300p) ISBN 978-1-77148-151-9

Hollihan (The Four Stages of Cruelty) presents two nested stories in a format reminiscent of Ace doubles. In Gamification, disgraced executive Reid Frank is recruited by former colleague to investigate and sabotage what may be an ill-conceived but sincere illicit affair on the part of the CEO of the company he used to work for; the possibility the man is a victim of an insidious act of corporate manipulation is deemed too dangerous to ignore. But flooded with information of increasingly dubious value, Reid must decipher if his role is puppeteer or merely one of the puppets. In C-Monkeys, the obscure pulp novel that exists within the world of Gamification, tough-guy Gadsen escapes from a sanitarium only to find himself trapped on an island populated by the egotistical genius Chopek, master of an enigmatic species of menacing inhumanly intelligent amphibians; the result is one part Island of Doctor Moreau to one part War With the Newts. The two novels entwine and support each other, with the fable-like narrative inevitability of C-Monkeys, violent but comforting in its clarity, underlining the paranoia and existential doubt expressed by Gamification. The combination is more striking than either could be on its own. Agent: Chris Bucci, Anne McDermid & Associates. (Nov.)