{"id":10684,"date":"2025-12-05T17:03:39","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T21:03:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/?p=10684"},"modified":"2025-12-05T17:03:39","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T21:03:39","slug":"book-review-lichtenberg-by-tom-oconnell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/book-review-lichtenberg-by-tom-oconnell\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Lichtenberg by Tom O’Connell"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"cover<\/a><\/p>\n

Lichtenberg<\/i> by Tom O’Connell<\/p>\n

Temple Dark Books, 2025<\/p>\n

ISBN: 9781068250736<\/p>\n

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition<\/p>\n

Buy:\u00a0Amazon.com\u00a0 | <\/a><\/strong>Temple Dark Books<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Lichtenberg<\/i> is a grim, bleak dystopian tale that keeps the reader interested throughout, because it always maintains a flicker of hope throughout the novel.\u00a0 For the readers out there that enjoyed books like Cormac McCarthy’s\u00a0The Road,\u00a0<\/i>this should be a perfect read. \u00a0 The book is written in the present tense from the perspective of Riven, a soldier in the Corps, the group tasked with protecting the City of Raidon from the Ramasites. Raidon is one of the remaining bastions of civilization, and all inhabitants have one fear: that the Ramasites, humans trying to survive outside the city, will one day band together and destroy it.\u00a0 No matter that none of the city’s inhabitants remember the time before whatever calamity happened, it’s just what they have been told, and it’s what the historical archives tell them.<\/p>\n

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The job of the Corps, a loosely disciplined army of troops that love violence, is simple: patrol the countryside, and kill anyone they find.\u00a0 Men, women, children– all are a threat, and must be eliminated. \u00a0 The plot centers on Riven, and the doubts he starts having with the validity of the mission of the Corps, which of course is its only reason for existence.\u00a0 The narrative is really more about Riven and how he sees things.\u00a0 That’s why the first-person present tense (a style I normally loathe) actually works for this book.\u00a0 It lets the reader get into Riven’s head in an immersive and immediate way. A significant amount of the writing concerns Riven’s thoughts and feelings regarding the Corps and what they do.\u00a0 It’s a fairly in-depth character study, and it is well done.\u00a0 The story doesn’t provide any information from before Riven’s time, or after it, since he is the focal point of the story.\u00a0 This is one of the few times I have read a book written in this style that actually works, since too many books written in the present tense come off like bad movie scripts.<\/p>\n

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This is not just a detailed psychological novel: there are plenty of things happening in the story, more than enough to keep the pages flipping.\u00a0 The interactions between the Corps and Ramasites provide a good deal of the action, as well as some of the basis for Riven’s discontent.\u00a0 There are violent gun battles that show the inhumanity of the Corps members, and some of the training that takes place inside the walls of Raidon helps explain how the soldiers became what they are.\u00a0 When you are raised on violence, you are likely to do the same to others, as they demonstrate on the Ramasites.\u00a0 It all builds to a very satisfying conclusion that hits with a bang, and Riven’s fate is quite dramatic: it would look incredible on the silver screen.\u00a0 The only thing I didn’t understand was the brief epilogue chapter, The way the book ended before that was perfect as it was: open ended, but with hope for the future. \u00a0 In closing, definitely a good one, and worth checking out. Recommended.<\/p>\n

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Reviewed by Murray Samuelson<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lichtenberg by Tom O’Connell Temple Dark Books, 2025 ISBN: 9781068250736 Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition Buy:\u00a0Amazon.com\u00a0 | Temple Dark Books   Lichtenberg is a grim, bleak dystopian tale that keeps the reader interested throughout, because it always maintains a flicker of hope throughout the novel.\u00a0 For the readers out there that enjoyed books like Cormac McCarthy’s\u00a0The<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5901,645,749,5902,5898,5900,226,5899],"class_list":["post-10684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dystopian-books","tag-horror-book-reviews","tag-horror-books","tag-irish-authors","tag-lichtenberg","tag-postapocalyptic-books","tag-science-fiction","tag-tom-oconnell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10684"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10689,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10684\/revisions\/10689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}