The Oracle Year
The Oracle Year – Charles Soule
Cassandra, princess of Troy (old Troy), either mated or split from Apollo? Doomed to tell truth about the future, but have no one believe her? So the idea, from a reading list, book club thing? Suggested it was an oracle who could foretell the future with accuracy, unparalleled.
Does an oracle fall under Cassandra’s Curse?
A bass player? Really? Going to lead with that?
Suppose you woke up one morning and knew, without a doubt, 108 things that would happen in the next year? The book explores the impact of that knowledge, and how a person chooses to use that information, in part to get really rich, but in part, to help make the world a better place.
“Knowledge is power,” as I’ve oft been assured, and that plays out, in the book’s long game.
Part of the original “press push” included allusions to the author’s background scripting comics. A personal favorite for me, Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash has the unlikely story — writer mythology no doubt — that the novel started as a comic book, a graphic novel, and when he realized it wasn’t going to sell like that, he just wrote the story. So goes the myth. When I glanced at the first of the press and publicity material for The Oracle Year, it included the author’s successes as a comic book, ahem, graphic novel, author. Piqued my interest, and that was the main reason I sought out a copy to read.
There were copious references to current events, some rather plainly fictional news, but the technology was appropriate.
Reading it, I didn’t get the sense that this was a “comic book author,” as the pacing was book-like. Enjoyable experience, with some meaning carefully layered in, particularly to me? Metaphysical metaphors, worthy of discussion.
Tightly plotted, well-served. Don’t know how it will stand up over time, but then, we never do. In the moment, it’s an excellent novel. Well worth reading.
The Oracle Year
My own version? Oracular astrology.