The Lumen Caligo: Fallen - Lawrence C. Cobb - ★.½

AUTHOR: Lawrence C. Cobb

NARRATOR: Caleb Bow

SERIES: The Lumen Caligo, #1

GENRE: Middle-Grade/Teen Fantasy

PUBLICATION DATE: July 03 2024

RATING: 1.5 stars.

In a Nutshell: An indie middle-grade/teen fantasy about some unusual beings living on earth. This book has an outstanding concept, but the writing choices needed a lot of rethinking. The approach would have perhaps suited 1924 better than 2024. This is the first of a planned series, but I am unsure if I want to continue with it. This is an outlier review.

Plot Preview:

California. When Martin Weatherford finds a baby left at his doorstep, he's not much surprised to see whose baby it is and who left it. With the help of his landlady Mrs. Palermo, Martin raises little Cyrus.

Currently eleven, Cyrus is wheelchair-bound because of some paralysing disease. He knows that he's adopted, that he is way above his age level in intelligence, and also that he doesn't have long to live. But soon, he discovers that whatever he thought he knew is inaccurate, and he actually knows zilch about the things that matter.

The story comes to us mostly in Cyrus's third person perspective.

Bookish Yays:

✔️ The introduction: So interesting that I could feel my anticipating for the book rise. If you want a taste of this intro, read the GR blurb; it reveals only this opening statement and nothing else.

✔️ The concept of the plot. Beings with white wings, black wings, and a special one with dual coloured wings; the special being having the role of a peacekeeper between nations; the disappearance of this “peacekeeper” 650 years ago without any trace… There’s so much creativity in this idea!

✔️ Mrs. Arlene Palermo [Not sure of the spelling; disadvantage of having only the audiobook] – Martin’s landlady and confidante. Easily the best character of the book as she feels more human than robotic.

✔️ Cyrus’s new schoolmate from Hawaii [Not at all sure of her name. Is it Auliyee? Oliyi?] – a wonderful character. She isn’t portrayed as a typical girl sidekick but is outspoken and clever. Loved her spunky attitude and her banter with Cyrus!

✔️ The fantastical worldbuilding – a nice combination of worldly elements and otherworldly characters.

Bookish Mixed Bags:

⚠️ Martin is an interesting character. His overly formal manner of speaking makes sense considering his... ahem... true nature. But some of his decisions are shocking and highly questionable. I did like his character at the start, but once the reveals came out, I found it tough to continue viewing him in the same spirit. Cyrus is a typical middle-grader in many ways, and yet he isn’t typical. His initial chapters are fabulous as he is shown as a standard teen with standard teen tantrums and attitudes. But once the story changes track, I couldn’t connect to his personality as it seemed so different from his earlier avatar. For both these characters, who are the most important duo in the story, I would have appreciated a more consistent development.

⚠️ The rapport between Martin and Cyrus is outstanding and contains enough heartwarming moments, but this often belies the fact that it is also very one-sided, with Martin being subtly dominating and no one else questioning his authority.

⚠️ While the start is not that fantastical, the story is still interesting enough. Once the fantasy starts making an appearance, the story goes a mixed way, with some part of it being appealing and some being farfetched and a lot being unexplained.

⚠️ The pacing is quite slow, but as this is planned as a long series, it might be that this book served only one purpose – of establishing a background to the core events.

⚠️ The ending is interesting but also a major cliffhanger. With this being planned as a seven-book series, and one book due to release every year, there’s a long wait to the finish line.

Bookish Nays:

❌ To be honest, I didn't know that there would be a wheelchair-bound character as the main protagonist of this story. I usually avoid fantasy novels with such characters because inevitably, most such books turn to a superhero-kind of narrative where the character breaks free of the wheelchair to perform miraculous tasks. It's terribly ableist. When the book began, I hoped that it would steer clear of this backward-minded attitude, but it didn’t.

❌ As much as the plot was innovative, the content was equally regressive. Body shaming, ableism, fat shaming, gender stereotyping, racial stereotyping, racism and white supremacy, white saviour approach, abusive parenting masked as concern and love... every possible outdated mode of thinking is present in the book. Merely having the content wouldn’t have made the book reprehensible as sometimes, such content depicts an antagonist’s thinking. But all of this content is normalised in the narrative and no character even bats an eyelid at the negative remarks – that’s tough to forgive, all the more as this is marked as a middle-grade/teen fantasy. These tropes might have been ignored if the book had been written even two decades ago. But with so much awareness in recent times, it's important to ensure that printed content is respectful of all religions and ethnicities and genders and body shapes/sizes and so on.

❌ It’s not just the tropes, but even the writing in general is outmoded and limited. Every character is first judged by appearance. I wish there had not been so much needless stress on a person's cultural heritage or physical prowess or even looks. There’s only so many times a character can be called “exotic” just because of their ethnic background. One sentence that truly annoyed me was “Buddha will be jealous of that belly, for sure.” The pot-bellied “Laughing Buddha” (who is based on a historical Chinese monk named Budai) is NOT the same as “Buddha”, who is Gautama Buddha, the Indian prince who provided the principles of Buddhism. There’s no excuse for poor research.

❌ The writing is a little repetitive, and at times, there are even contradictions in the characters’ statements. The dialogues in the conversations seem a bit artificial at times. I am not sure if this is due to the nature of the “people”, but I didn’t enjoy the overly theatrical style.

🎧 The Audiobook Experience:

The audiobook, clocking at a little more than 8 hours, is narrated by Caleb Bow. He is quite good, though some of his voices go overboard. He even voices sound effects such as thudding and creaking. While his performance is overall decent, he seems to have committed spoonerisms a couple of times. I mean, there’s no way "Fit hit the shan" and "The mother had to tattoo her head's child" can be correct lines, right? The first could still be a creative way of getting out of a vulgar usage. The second makes no sense whatsoever.

All in all, while the story did provide some good moments, my experience was overshadowed by the slowness of the plot, the excessive focus on appearance, and the outdated thinking.

Despite the fact that there is great potential in the book, I wouldn’t like to recommend it without all the red flags being eliminated. Some of the issues would have passed muster in an adult fantasy, but in a book meant for middle-graders and teens, there’s no way such content can be acceptable.

1.5 stars, rounding up mainly as it is an indie venture and the potential concept is still good. Let’s hope the writing choices improve as the series goes ahead.

Please note that mine is an outlier review. So please do read the other opinions before you make up your mind.

My thanks to Colibri PVP for providing the ALC of “The Lumen Caligo: Fallen” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the audiobook. Sorry this didn’t work out better.