Epoch
By Timothy Carter
courtesy of Flux
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Vincent is a worried pre-teen. He’s disqualified from the school science fair for helping with his best friend’s project as his devout brother hands out unsolicited religious pamphlets in front of his own display. Meanwhile the loathsome rich kid’s booth is rocking the fair with high end computer graphics and live actors. To top it all off, he’s just seen an apocalyptic elf hiding under a table.

Epoch accounts the last two days of life on earth and Vincent’s attempt to save as many souls as he can in the process. Ironically, hindering his challenge is his family, whose fundamentalists beliefs require that they spend their time shunning mostly everything. Carter has created an almost Pythonesque religion that, if it were real, I’d pay $1000 to see how it was created:

Vincent’s family were Triumvirities, a new branch of Christianity that had popped up fairly recently in the spiritual marketplace. Triumvirities believed that three characters from the bible – Jesus, Moses and Abraham – had banded together to produce a text that spelled out the definitive version of God’s divine plan for the universe.

Fortunately for us, Vincent has been questioning that of late which allows him to see the aforementioned elf. This mystery gives him an excuse to go talk to his secret crush, Chanteuse, ex-babysitter and local hippie, about other belief systems, and is introduced to a world where elves, pixies, demons and other fantastic beings roam hidden from sight. It’s then he learns that humanity has reached it’s epoch and needs to be cleansed of the earth by indestructible demons. Unless he can get his old and new friends and unwilling family to a hidden Portal Site, all will be eaten in demon feeding frenzy.

This is my first YA (young adult) book I’ve read since cracking open Lemony Snicket book to read to my niece about 9 years ago, and before that, Heinlein’s Have Spacesuit Will Travel, back in the early 70s. I have to say, YA books have become a hell of a lot more sophisticated and pointed since I remember them. With nods to a certain coming of age boy-wizard, this is a streamlined, cartoony, less-subtle Golden Compass kind of adventure. Epoch races to the end of the world at a speed that post video game addicts can appreciate. It’s skillfully written with word plays, reversal phrasing and clear action that makes it a good read.

However (cue ominous organ music)…

The rebellious theme that makes teen writing enjoyable for it’s pubescent audience is there, but in Epoch it seems to be laughable contempt for organized religion, while maintaining that your own beliefs and the beliefs of the ones you love are to be preserved at any price. Ironic? Yup. Funny ironic? Sort of. It didn’t anger me, but it did make me wonder if I was too old to get it. I found I was cringing at how Carter uses the convictions of others as a joke: Vincent’s family are repeatedly seen as finger pointing zealots who spend their weekends praying and protesting. Amazingly, Vincent never loses his love and acceptance for his family’s behaviour (though not without mild grumbling) while they constantly berate him for his religious disobedience. It’s a device seen repeatedly in Harry Potter (there, I said it!) which I felt was used a bit too much in both books. I’d recommend Epoch to a kid who wasn’t at all religious or mildly agnostic, but I would do so with a disclaimer that it was satire. One other moment I found questionable was this bizarre slang choice (I realize I’m nitpicking a seat-of-their-pants teen fantasy/adventure novel that makes me sound like an old coot – get off my lawn) I wonder why Carter chose “bum” instead of “butt” or “rear end” whenever a character fell on their ass, yet allowed the slur “jerkwad”, a clear reference towards a villainous character equaling an unexpected masturbatory result.

That’s pretty much the only disputable stuff I would alert a parent to, within the book, if I felt the need to. But I’d probably not. At 14, kids are already using the word “shit” in reference to the chores you give them.

While researching this book I discovered a curious fact that Flux is owned by Llewellyn, a 100+ year old Midwest publishing company dedicated to “alternative health and healing, astrology, earth-based religions, shamanism, Gnostic Christianity and Kabbalah”, so the fact that they can publish a book that pokes fun at their own core beliefs, makes me like the book more.

I give it a mystical 4 out of 5.