Amazonas-Alan Peter Ryan

Amazonas
Alan Peter Ryan
Cemetery Dance, Oct 2011, $35.00
ISBN: 9781587672330

Married couple Edwin and Henrietta, are on another of his get rich quick schemes in which she dutifully tags along. This time they sail up the Amazon River floating parallel to the shore. On the vessel with them are natives and Crown who persuaded Edwin to go after the Slave Tree which means sailing further into the dark unknown than anyone reported has traveled on the river. Civilization in terms of a small outpost has been left far behind.

Edwin explains to his skeptical wife that Crown insists the Slave Tree grows creatures that they can control as slaves though these abominations have blood that is green and flesh that feels like fiber. She fears her beloved spouse who displays physical signs of stress has been conned by their enigmatic charismatic partner. Crown orders Henrietta to find a way to keep these creatures alive. Every pod Crown opens produces one of them. Edwin dies and Crown vanishes, which leaves it to Henrietta to find a way to keep the oddities alive so she can sell them as slaves and make a fortune; that is if she can return to civilization. She believes if she can not figure out a way to keep them alive she dies.

Alan Peter Ryan writes a dark atmospheric allegorical horror thriller in which the river and the jungle it flows through take on a sort of supernatural presence; mindful of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The tension is thicker than the nearby rain forest as readers anticipate something bad happening to the travelers especially the married couple as nature is violent and non discriminating whether it is race, gender or mentally competent. Adding to the eerie sense of doom is the audience never quite learns what The Slave Tree is; only what it can do.

Harriet Klausner