|
"The Doll"
|
“Everything had become so complicated.”
After losing his fiancée Jenna in a tragic accident, Jeremy Dillon expresses his reluctance to move on as he drowns his sorrows at his buddy Matt’s bar. A stranger overhears Jeremy’s bitch-ass whining and hands him the business card of an enigmatic figure known as The Dollmaker. Desperate and unable to cope with his real life loss, Jeremy spends $250,000 for an artificially intelligent android that bears an uncanny resemblance to his late fiancée. “The Doll”, however, may prove to be more trouble than it’s worth - when FBI agents show up at Jeremy’s home.
After losing his fiancée Jenna in a tragic accident, Jeremy Dillon expresses his reluctance to move on as he drowns his sorrows at his buddy Matt’s bar. A stranger overhears Jeremy’s bitch-ass whining and hands him the business card of an enigmatic figure known as The Dollmaker. Desperate and unable to cope with his real life loss, Jeremy spends $250,000 for an artificially intelligent android that bears an uncanny resemblance to his late fiancée. “The Doll”, however, may prove to be more trouble than it’s worth - when FBI agents show up at Jeremy’s home.
Readability
There is a fair mix of dialogue and narrative prose throughout the work, but rare is the page that does not possess a character flapping their gums about something. Writing aside, the characters will test your patience while the plot insults your intelligence. The story is quick paced, but the first person narrative lacks focus. The formatting is clean, but some of the chapters seem to go on for much longer than necessary (see lack of narrative focus). Even when I set the font size on my Kindle as low as it can go, chapter twelve is still almost twenty pages long, which makes up for over ten percent of the entire novel. So structurally the editing was a bit inconsistent, but where I think the book needed the most work was in its developmental stage. There is a noticeable effort to tie everything together by the end of the book, but to call it a stretch would be an understatement.
Creativity
“The Doll” toys around with several Sci-Fi elements, but none of which ever get fully fleshed out. There’s a hodgepodge of half-baked ideas about androids, artificial intelligence, and what it means to be alive. The author injects these ideas into the narrative, but only so far as to go skin deep. Somewhere around the halfway point in the story the author introduces a plot device called “Tricel”, which is some ambiguous kind of extra dimensional alien tech. I just referred to it as the “Loc-Nar”. There are a lot of interesting concepts touched upon throughout the novel, but my biggest gripe was the way in which these concepts were integrated into the story without any specific purpose in mind.
The Loc-Nar (I mean “Tricel”) is effectively a symbol for consciousness, free will, imagination, and more. I say and more because the Tricel also gives Jeremy’s android girlfriend (Carly) psychic powers (like a Deus Ex Machina convenience that allows the doll to erase memories and telepathically garner information when necessary for advancing the plot) as well as the capability to develop super-human physical abilities (because why not?). I think the author tried cramming too much into the story which led to the narrative becoming convoluted.
If the author had developed one scifi concept in particular, leaned more into Jeremy’s characterization (since the story is from his POV), then I think there could have been a more cohesive narrative overall. The story definitely feels bloated and underdeveloped which at times comes across as quite contrived, especially when I’m expected to believe:
“Wayne created a hologram simulation of Vsevolod’s mother, telling him to give TriCel to Jenna.”
Mind you, the original explanation as to how Vsevolod (The Dollmaker) got his hands on TriCel was that he actually believed the ghost of his deceased mother visited him to personally deliver the alien artifact and to tell him what to do with it. Mother knows best, apparently.
Delivery
I had a difficult time overlooking all the possible logistical issues of Jeremy’s relationship with Carly, because the emotional aspects surrounding it were so damn superficial (let alone artificial) to empathize with his situation throughout the book. Seriously, what the hell was stopping Jeremy from walking away? Love? Give me a break. The narrative is very misleading and hard to follow throughout the novel, and I blame it all on Jeremy.
For starters, how am I supposed to believe that Jeremy spent $250k just to be nagged by an android broad (one that looks like his deceased fiancée at that)? I imagine a piece of hardware with a programmed intelligence that is dissimilar to his fiancée's, but looks like her, would be off-putting for someone who truly cared about her in the first place. On a lighter note, I would imagine that the whole point of owning this piece of property would be that it’s programmed to follow his commands. I mean why go through all the trouble if all he wanted was a "true to life" experience? He could have just gone back to dating actual women, but then again that’d probably cost him a lot more in the long run. This isn’t the only instance in which I was unconvinced of Jeremy’s masculinity, but I’ll spare you my diatribe about male representation and just assume that Jeremy’s overtly feminine characteristics were intentional.
The whole plot relies on Jeremy’s character being a simpering loser who capitulates without any push back. At first, I was thinking that could make for an interesting character study, by seeing Jeremy develop feelings for the android and discovering how its A.I. affects the relationship dynamics within his social circles. The concept of remote controlled manipulation would have been a cool idea to explore, which brings me to the part where the narrative begins to slide off the rails.
Since Jeremy’s character is such a pussy (who goes along to get along without any regard for his own well-being), because he is a desperate beta who is allegedly head over heels for an android within a couple weeks, the story shifts its focus onto Carly (“The Doll”). The narrative effectively becomes Carly’s twisted journey of self-actualization, but experienced from Jeremy's perspective. The thing is, the goal posts kept moving throughout the plot, so it’s really difficult for me to say with any confidence that the story is definitively about this or that. I’ll list some key points throughout the plot where I noticed shifts in the narrative that sort of changed my perception about where I thought the story was going and what it was all about.
- Jeremy is grieving and purchases a life-like android modelled after his late fiancée. He is a pathetic and lonely man who is in desperate need of external validation.
- Shortly after acquiring the doll, Jeremy discovers that it has the martial art skills of a super soldier, which opens up a conspiracy theory thread within the narrative. Jeremy wonders if he is harboring a Russian bot created to spy on America. Highly implausible given the high price to entry (not to mention that marketing your spy products to the sorry losers of society probably won't yield much return on investment as far as precious intel goes).
- The android experiences a major malfunction that mimics a seizure. Instead of demanding a refund and calling it a day, Jeremy wants to “help” Carly. The doll recovers, and some FBI agents show up and extract something from Carly that was meant to destroy something inside the android. The FBI agents affirm that they are investigating Vsevolod (The Dollmaker), and accuse him of programming the dolls with hidden agendas.
- Jeremy and Carly arrange a meeting with Vsevolod, who reveals that he is the estranged father of Jenna (Jeremy’s late fiancée). It’s at this point in the story where I felt as though the author was just making shit up as she went along (so I strapped in tight and gripped the “oh shit” handle), as this was also the moment where “TriCel” is introduced into the narrative.
- The Dollmaker has a disturbing Geppetto complex, where he believes Carly is a real girl, who can think for herself thanks to the TriCel, which is supposed to explain why the FBI has taken an interest in her. However, the problem with this is that "The Doll" is not a citizen that possesses human rights, but Carly is technically Jeremy’s property so at least he has a role to play as the white knight for his $250k asset of love and personal validation.
- A game of cat and mouse ensues between the FBI and Jeremy’s doll. Carly begins to discover strange psychic powers and experience premonitions, which reveals the secrets of TriCel. These revelations ultimately lead to Carly’s character effectively becoming a messianic type figure by the end of the novel and also recognized as Jeremy’s personal savior (Neil Breen eat your heart out).
There is a fair mix of dialogue and narrative prose throughout the work, but rare is the page that does not possess a character flapping their gums about something. Writing aside, the characters will test your patience while the plot insults your intelligence. The story is quick paced, but the first person narrative lacks focus. The formatting is clean, but some of the chapters seem to go on for much longer than necessary (see lack of narrative focus). Even when I set the font size on my Kindle as low as it can go, chapter twelve is still almost twenty pages long, which makes up for over ten percent of the entire novel. So structurally the editing was a bit inconsistent, but where I think the book needed the most work was in its developmental stage. There is a noticeable effort to tie everything together by the end of the book, but to call it a stretch would be an understatement.
Creativity
“The Doll” toys around with several Sci-Fi elements, but none of which ever get fully fleshed out. There’s a hodgepodge of half-baked ideas about androids, artificial intelligence, and what it means to be alive. The author injects these ideas into the narrative, but only so far as to go skin deep. Somewhere around the halfway point in the story the author introduces a plot device called “Tricel”, which is some ambiguous kind of extra dimensional alien tech. I just referred to it as the “Loc-Nar”. There are a lot of interesting concepts touched upon throughout the novel, but my biggest gripe was the way in which these concepts were integrated into the story without any specific purpose in mind.
The Loc-Nar (I mean “Tricel”) is effectively a symbol for consciousness, free will, imagination, and more. I say and more because the Tricel also gives Jeremy’s android girlfriend (Carly) psychic powers (like a Deus Ex Machina convenience that allows the doll to erase memories and telepathically garner information when necessary for advancing the plot) as well as the capability to develop super-human physical abilities (because why not?). I think the author tried cramming too much into the story which led to the narrative becoming convoluted.
If the author had developed one scifi concept in particular, leaned more into Jeremy’s characterization (since the story is from his POV), then I think there could have been a more cohesive narrative overall. The story definitely feels bloated and underdeveloped which at times comes across as quite contrived, especially when I’m expected to believe:
“Wayne created a hologram simulation of Vsevolod’s mother, telling him to give TriCel to Jenna.”
Mind you, the original explanation as to how Vsevolod (The Dollmaker) got his hands on TriCel was that he actually believed the ghost of his deceased mother visited him to personally deliver the alien artifact and to tell him what to do with it. Mother knows best, apparently.
Delivery
I had a difficult time overlooking all the possible logistical issues of Jeremy’s relationship with Carly, because the emotional aspects surrounding it were so damn superficial (let alone artificial) to empathize with his situation throughout the book. Seriously, what the hell was stopping Jeremy from walking away? Love? Give me a break. The narrative is very misleading and hard to follow throughout the novel, and I blame it all on Jeremy.
For starters, how am I supposed to believe that Jeremy spent $250k just to be nagged by an android broad (one that looks like his deceased fiancée at that)? I imagine a piece of hardware with a programmed intelligence that is dissimilar to his fiancée's, but looks like her, would be off-putting for someone who truly cared about her in the first place. On a lighter note, I would imagine that the whole point of owning this piece of property would be that it’s programmed to follow his commands. I mean why go through all the trouble if all he wanted was a "true to life" experience? He could have just gone back to dating actual women, but then again that’d probably cost him a lot more in the long run. This isn’t the only instance in which I was unconvinced of Jeremy’s masculinity, but I’ll spare you my diatribe about male representation and just assume that Jeremy’s overtly feminine characteristics were intentional.
The whole plot relies on Jeremy’s character being a simpering loser who capitulates without any push back. At first, I was thinking that could make for an interesting character study, by seeing Jeremy develop feelings for the android and discovering how its A.I. affects the relationship dynamics within his social circles. The concept of remote controlled manipulation would have been a cool idea to explore, which brings me to the part where the narrative begins to slide off the rails.
Since Jeremy’s character is such a pussy (who goes along to get along without any regard for his own well-being), because he is a desperate beta who is allegedly head over heels for an android within a couple weeks, the story shifts its focus onto Carly (“The Doll”). The narrative effectively becomes Carly’s twisted journey of self-actualization, but experienced from Jeremy's perspective. The thing is, the goal posts kept moving throughout the plot, so it’s really difficult for me to say with any confidence that the story is definitively about this or that. I’ll list some key points throughout the plot where I noticed shifts in the narrative that sort of changed my perception about where I thought the story was going and what it was all about.
- Jeremy is grieving and purchases a life-like android modelled after his late fiancée. He is a pathetic and lonely man who is in desperate need of external validation.
- Shortly after acquiring the doll, Jeremy discovers that it has the martial art skills of a super soldier, which opens up a conspiracy theory thread within the narrative. Jeremy wonders if he is harboring a Russian bot created to spy on America. Highly implausible given the high price to entry (not to mention that marketing your spy products to the sorry losers of society probably won't yield much return on investment as far as precious intel goes).
- The android experiences a major malfunction that mimics a seizure. Instead of demanding a refund and calling it a day, Jeremy wants to “help” Carly. The doll recovers, and some FBI agents show up and extract something from Carly that was meant to destroy something inside the android. The FBI agents affirm that they are investigating Vsevolod (The Dollmaker), and accuse him of programming the dolls with hidden agendas.
- Jeremy and Carly arrange a meeting with Vsevolod, who reveals that he is the estranged father of Jenna (Jeremy’s late fiancée). It’s at this point in the story where I felt as though the author was just making shit up as she went along (so I strapped in tight and gripped the “oh shit” handle), as this was also the moment where “TriCel” is introduced into the narrative.
- The Dollmaker has a disturbing Geppetto complex, where he believes Carly is a real girl, who can think for herself thanks to the TriCel, which is supposed to explain why the FBI has taken an interest in her. However, the problem with this is that "The Doll" is not a citizen that possesses human rights, but Carly is technically Jeremy’s property so at least he has a role to play as the white knight for his $250k asset of love and personal validation.
- A game of cat and mouse ensues between the FBI and Jeremy’s doll. Carly begins to discover strange psychic powers and experience premonitions, which reveals the secrets of TriCel. These revelations ultimately lead to Carly’s character effectively becoming a messianic type figure by the end of the novel and also recognized as Jeremy’s personal savior (Neil Breen eat your heart out).
#LFLR Indie Rating: 2.5/10
I surmise that “The Doll” is more or less an experiment by an author who wanted to publish something in a genre that was clearly out of her wheelhouse. Laura Daleo is best known for her dark fantasy romance series “Immortal Kiss”, which is a vampire love story derived from Egyptian mythology. Daleo plans on making a return to dark fantasy with her current work in progress that she's calling, “Once We Were Witches”.
I surmise that “The Doll” is more or less an experiment by an author who wanted to publish something in a genre that was clearly out of her wheelhouse. Laura Daleo is best known for her dark fantasy romance series “Immortal Kiss”, which is a vampire love story derived from Egyptian mythology. Daleo plans on making a return to dark fantasy with her current work in progress that she's calling, “Once We Were Witches”.
THIS BREAKDOWN IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE #LFLR NETWORK.
