Grounded on a remote section of the Alaskan coast, the freighter Viator exerts a powerful control over the group of four men hired to determine the ship’s worth as salvage. As the group starts to come apart at the seams, their leader, Thomas Willander, is afflicted by a series of disturbing dreams. As the men move from eccentric to borderline, they become incapable of escaping Viator’s eerie allure.
This edition of Viator has been revised and enlarged significantly by Shepard, who was driven to the brink of a mental and physical breakdown by this novel. This Concord ePress ebook is the only available edition of the new Viator.
Filled with long, beautiful sentences that play out like never-ending riffs from a jazz musician's horn, the new novel by World Fantasy Award–winner Shepard works as a stylistic experiment and as a short, edgy look at the intricacies of fate and the power each individual may or may not have over his own destiny. Housed aboard Viator, an abandoned ship off the coast of Alaska, Thomas Wilander is a man with a failed past and an uncertain future. Hoping the salvage job on Viator will be a springboard to a new life, Wilander is disturbed to find that his four workmates are behaving erratically, perhaps suffering from mental instability. When Wilander strikes up a relationship with Arlene, a woman in the nearby town of Kaliaska, the four men resent it and retreat further from Wilander and reality. With Arlene's help, Wilander investigates Viator's past and the origins of the mysterious man who hired him, eventually learning that some of the answers may lie in his own dreams, which seem to be coming true. Shepard's smooth, flowing prose aptly mirrors Wilander's delusion-laden mind and makes for an enriching read.
Description:
Grounded on a remote section of the Alaskan coast, the freighter Viator exerts a powerful control over the group of four men hired to determine the ship’s worth as salvage. As the group starts to come apart at the seams, their leader, Thomas Willander, is afflicted by a series of disturbing dreams. As the men move from eccentric to borderline, they become incapable of escaping Viator’s eerie allure. This edition of Viator has been revised and enlarged significantly by Shepard, who was driven to the brink of a mental and physical breakdown by this novel. This Concord ePress ebook is the only available edition of the new Viator. Filled with long, beautiful sentences that play out like never-ending riffs from a jazz musician's horn, the new novel by World Fantasy Award–winner Shepard works as a stylistic experiment and as a short, edgy look at the intricacies of fate and the power each individual may or may not have over his own destiny. Housed aboard Viator, an abandoned ship off the coast of Alaska, Thomas Wilander is a man with a failed past and an uncertain future. Hoping the salvage job on Viator will be a springboard to a new life, Wilander is disturbed to find that his four workmates are behaving erratically, perhaps suffering from mental instability. When Wilander strikes up a relationship with Arlene, a woman in the nearby town of Kaliaska, the four men resent it and retreat further from Wilander and reality. With Arlene's help, Wilander investigates Viator's past and the origins of the mysterious man who hired him, eventually learning that some of the answers may lie in his own dreams, which seem to be coming true. Shepard's smooth, flowing prose aptly mirrors Wilander's delusion-laden mind and makes for an enriching read.