Pros
- Deserves Multiple Readings
- Great Characters
- Keeps You Guessing
- Original Story
- Page Turner
- Suspenseful
- Well Written
Cons
Best For
- Older Readers
Comments about iUniverse, Incorporated Pandemic of Lies: The Exile:
The political content in the novel Pandemics of Lies: The Exile is high. The thriller side of the book cannot be denied either. Thus, it could be said that the Pandemic of Lies is a political suspense novel. Still, such a description does not do full justice to the work. Pandemic of Lies is more than that. Reminiscent of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's works, it is a cry against the assault of the modern state against man's basic rights through manipulation or force.I should immediately add that there is no political pamphleteering in the novel. As a matter of fact, there seems to be a continuous dialectical debate going on between President Alejandro Salvador and his former political advisor Manuel Cruz, but at no time does the political controversy turn into a battle between Good and Evil. All the characters in Pandemic of Lies are flawed, including the Cuban-American protagonist Cruz. The grey, not the black and white, predominates. Being the daughter of Asian immigrants, I can appreciate where the author Pedro C. Lopez is coming from. But unlike I, who established roots in L.A. permanently and have never returned to make my home in the part of the Asian continent where my parents were born, the Cuban-American Lopez returned to Latin America and now lives in Ecuador, where he apparently wrote his novel. The fictional character Manuel Cruz does something similar, but to his surprise it turns out that to national power comes a promising, young John-F.-Kennedy-type president who, once installed in the presidential seat, begins to show a proclivity toward the authoritarian way of governing. This not only turns Manuel's stomach but reminds him of the hateful Fidel Castro as well. In Manuel's mind the situation triggers memories that go back to his native Cuba and Castro's revolution. In this flow of old remembrances, he equates Cuba with a lost Eden and Castro with the devil that drove him from there and, in the process, economically and spiritually destroyed his homeland. So Manuel Cruz decides to do something about a similar process occurring in his new country of residence, the mythic Banador.The book's strength, in my honest opinion, derives from the passion embedded in every page of the novel. One cannot help but perceive that Pedro C. López feels his themes. Yes, there is planning, yes, there is structure, and, yes, there is plot. But all these elements are subservient to the driving force behind this captivating work of literature: the deep desire to get the urgent message out about the growing loss of democracy and freedom south of the border before it is too late.
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