The Golden City is a mixed success

There is a scene in the novel "The Golden City" when Gabriel Corrigan reaches the afforementioned locale in the Sixth World, the world of the gods. It is empty. Abandoned. Mostly. Except for the one man Gabriel has been seeking through the course of The Fourth Realm Trilogy: his father. It's a Joseph Campbellian moment of Atonement (at-one-ment) with the Father.

Matthew informs his son that the gods have long since abandoned the city. They are on their own, and this is an opportunity.

"The Golden City" is the final installment in the series by John Twelve Hawks. The series is an exercise in science fantasy. It focuses on the consequences of scientific advances in the contemporary urban world but grounds it in a larger context of the Six Worlds of Buddhism.It tells the story of the Travelers. The Travelers are people who possess the gift to leave their bodies and travel to the other five realms. In doing so they bring back insights which can transform human society.

The central conflict is between the Corrigan brothers: Michael and Gabriel. Gabriel is protected by Maya, a member of the Harlequins. Michael comes to lead the Brethern, the traditional enemy of the Travelers and Harlequins. The root conflict is between the Brethern, working through their public face, The Evergreen Foundation, and their need for power and control, and the resistance and the need for freedom.

Michael's ascension to the leadership of the Bretheran comes to a climax in this novel as he delivers a chilling speech about the economics of control, what may come to be known as 'the cubicle speech.' While "survellance nation" is central to this story, it doesn't necessarily finger technology as the enemy. The resistance uses technology as surely as the Bretheran does.What it comes down to is how we use that technology to shape our lives. Do we allow the "Panoticon" of our survellance technology, motivated by fear and the ideology of dead ideas to shape our lives into a clean, direct line from birth to death? Or do we allow the natural and messy process of the Uncertainty Principle of quantum physics to enrich our lives through the free exercise of choice?

The book ends where the series began, in Los Angeles. Hawks clearly has affection for London and he's done a lot of homework putting this book together. One wishes he had wrapped up the cliffhanger sooner, but this is a minor flaw. The greater flaw is that the book's ending is less than satisfying. That may be in part because despite being an urban scifi/fantasy work he's committed to keeping it grounded in the real world. And in the real world, as Angel put it, "There's no grand plan, no big win." But with the novel's connection to larger mythological themes, one might have preferred something akin to the end of the "Lord of the Rings" where the world is substantially different at the end of the series than at the beginning.

"The Golden City," like its predecessors "The Traveler" and "The Dark River" is a fast-paced read. Like other writers, such as Dan Brown, Hawks wants us to consider that alternative narratives run their courses through the history of the world we think we know and that larger struggles are afoot. But Hawks also wants us to consider that we are active participants and have a choice in this struggle; that we can resist the steamroller of history; that we can fight with the powers of the exercise of free will, storytelling and compassion; that every life has value and meaning. And to that end, the novel succeeds admirably despite its flaws.