Synopses & Reviews
The human race has just begun. In the Bay Area in the mid-1960s, several people are struck by a cosmic blue light that "quickens" their DNA, causing them instantaneously to evolve far beyond the present state of the human race. They become the full actualization of humankind, with strengths, understandings and communication abilities that exceed our imagining. Blue Light is the story of this quickening, and the conflict between these precursors of a new race of humans and the old breed they seem destined to supplant. Unfolding from the point of view of Chance, a half-black, half-white lost soul who becomes a follower of the "blues," the novel traces battles among those struck by the light (including one who becomes the living embodiment of Death) and their quest to bring their message of evolution and higher purpose to the rest of the world. Blue Light explores some of the questions about race, identity, and humanity that are the hallmark of the author's other best-selling fiction, but his mind-stretching new approach will take his readers to a fascinating place they've never traveled.
Review
"This is going to be a great leap of faith for Mosley fans, but those who make it will be rewarded with a beautifully written, deeply spiritual novel. Recommended." Library Journal
Review
"For readers accustomed to the gut-real encounters, sharp dialogue and quirky perceptions that enliven the first-person narrations of Mosley's Easy Rawlins mysteries...Blue Light may be a disappointment." Mel Watkins, The New York Times Book Review
Review
"[M]isguided. Blue Light is an odd mixture of science fiction and inspirational fable....There are some jolting scenes of sexuality and violence, and some arresting images...but the biology is insufficiently imagined, the time sequence is sometimes confusing and a sort of vague poesy that is a far cry from Mosley's typically sinewy prose is the predominant style." Publishers Weekly
Review
"A mind-bending trip into the brave new world...good writing regardless of genre." USA Today
Review
"Not even artful prose can rescue Mosley, who seems cowed by his own New Age-y concept." Charles Winecoff, Entertainment Weekly
Review
"[An] extravagant futuristic fantasy....The result is an ambitious mess, inventive and visionary as Mosley's greatest admirers might wish, but torn between windy prophecy and comic-book heroics." Kirkus Reviews
Synopsis
From an unknown point in the universe, an inscrutable blue light approaches our solar system. When it reaches Earth, it transforms those it strikes, causing them instantaneously to evolve beyond the present state of humanity. Each person imbued with the light becomes the full realization of his or her nature and potential, with strengths, understanding, and communication abilities far beyond our imagining.
Blue Light is the story of these people and their transformation. Narrated by Chance, a biracial man whose entire life has been a struggle for self-definition, the novel traces the desperate conflict of the "Blues" with one of their own, a man who struck by the light at the moment he expired has become the living embodiment of death. Written as a kind of gospel in which Chance describes the wanderings of this tribe and their ultimate, apocalyptic battle, the account is also full of his uncertainties about his own place in this strange new world and about whether he may be recording the beginning of the end of the human race.