Elvis Rex Kindle Edition

Elvis Rex is the debut novel of Larry Kickham. The novel is a tale of a dystopian future society, into which a young boy named Anthony is propelled. He is at the outset living in a monastery, when the "Army of the Lord" attacks and the boy takes refuge with a series of individuals who befriend him. Anthony's flight becomes a frightening journey through a world of religious zealots, slavery, and a bizarre scientific cloning experiment gone horribly awry. The experiment involves cloning "Elvis" whose various instantiations provide a pop-culture veneer to a military dictatorship. But the cloning process is not perfect, and many Elvis clones are summarily executed for not being perfect. What Anthony learns eventually is that he is himself a clone of Elvis, and this adds to his fear of the society around him. Anthony's journey takes on a Mark-Twain-like character as he meets one outcast after another on his travel down the Mississippi river toward freedom. The suspense in the story is continuous, and the final moments are satisfyingly liberating.It is not often that one finds a novel so imaginative and so engrossing as this one. Kickham's story is reminiscent of Twain's Huck Finn in a few ways, but the setting is clearly a nightmare future, made up of the worst elements of modern American society. Kickham's poses the recurrent question "what is civilization?"; there is no direct answer, but the river-journey becomes a revelation of what it isn't.If you enjoy a futuristic tale of a boy's journey down a river to freedom, give this book a read. It is well worth the effort.