Imagine J.R.R. Tolkien merging The Silmarillion with The Lord of the Rings. The Silmarillion details the political, cultural, geographic and historical aspects of the fantasy world inhabited by hobbits, wizards, human beings, and elves. Whereas The Lord of the Rings is a fantasy tale about one hobbit’s prize of a ring that takes him on adventures all across Middle Earth. The Lord of the Rings is a mesmerizing read; The Silmarillion demands diehard dedication to read till the end.
Michael Bellusci of The Humana Chronicles and The Dream Nation writes the political and philosophical backgrounds right into his fantasy tale around the early 1800’s. Unfortunately, Bellusci’s valiant attempt does not work for his novel. Bellusci tries to do too much, pulling in background information around characters, an ideal nation, the role of citizens and leaders, political structure and process. Tolkien reflected his background concepts around Middle Earth in his characters and storyline of The Lord of the Rings.
Just like Tolkien, Bellusci decries industrialization. But his thinking and opinions about our current industrial and technological problems take centre stage when one of his main characters, King Mathius, envisions the creation of an ideal nation state. I kept having to confirm that this story was set around 1812. Time and again, Bellusci uses modern terminology unbeknownst to this era, words like national stewardship. “One of his goals is to better integrate humans with nature and implement the practise of national stewardship.” This conceptual thinking is not reflective of any years around 1812 but of the 21st century.
The five main human characters in The Humana Chronicles and The Dream Nation mirror good and evil. Two male characters are identical twins with the “idealistic good” twin appointed heir to the throne, and the “pragmatic bad” twin as military general/warrior for the nation. The third man is the catalyst with amazing abilities of being a scientist, magician, architect, healer, inventor, and weapons manufacturer. For the two women, the chambermaid performs the evil, conniving role who uses her womanly ways to get what she wants, and the woman who runs a horse farm with her father becomes a poetess, love interest, and queen for the good king. None of the characters develop realism or depth where the reader truly cares and identifies with the characters’ struggles. When the scientist/magician receives a termination letter from the absent good king, he never consults with the queen or other non-existent court people, instead taking the word of the scheming chambermaid. This is a prime example of how isolated the characters are in this novel where the primary goal is to move the story forward to evolve the nation-state, the principal character.
Michael Bellusci has obviously spent enormous amounts of time and effort writing The Humana Chronicles and The Dream Nation. His concerns for the existing state of power and influence of nations overridden by technology, industrialization and all out greed carry greater weight than the niceties around a fictional story. By eliminating the fictional story, Bellusci could use his concepts to write a PhD thesis.
