I met Forbes West when? can´t remember, but due his Apocalypse Weird novel "Medium Talent", and one of the very first things I wanted to do was strangle him. I hated how he made me feel with it, but at the same time I loved his writing, and became a huge fan of his books. 

"Nighthawks At The Mission" got a new cover, and is currently available for a $1. It´s one of the strangest, most messed up books I have ever had the pleasure to read, and I cursed him loudly for having it written in 2nd person and used his name as an expletive. It made my brain melt. I still have zero idea what the book is about, and I suspect he doesn´t know it either. He is just like that. 

William S. Burroughs meets Hunter S. Thompson meets Sci-Fi/Coming Of Age meets pop culture meets some really fucked-upness. And that doesn´t do it justice, not by a long shot.

Grab it, heathens! and thank me later for it. You´re welcome. :-)

Blurb:
In today's universe, The Oberon is the last place a settler from the USA can find the American dream alive and well. Thousands of settlers have come to live in this mysterious land on another world accessed only by an energy portal in the South Pacific. Facing a hopeless future and betrayed by her long-time boyfriend, Sarah Orange is one of those who leave the Earth. Quickly she falls in with a group of illegal salvagers that operate at night in the empty ruins. Sarah risks death from both The Oberon's corporate overseers as well as the indigenous beings who hate the settlers. With her life spinning out of control from drug addiction, Sarah searches for love and money in a world so close to - and yet so different from- our very own. But first, she must survive a terrorist threat that slowly begins to destroy her new homeland.

Forbes West

Forbes West hates my guts.

Full disclosure: I won a free copy of "Nighthawks At The Mission" on Facebook after calling Forbes West a piece of shit, basically. Don´t ask, it´s a long story. I also told him to fuck off more often than he can count; like three times by now.

Forbes West: self-stylized asshole, medium talent and banned from Kinko´s for life. I do not know what Kinko´s is but I like them. They have taste.

Forbes West wrote a book. OK, nothing special about that. Everybody does it.

Forbes West wrote a book in second person. Now that IS special. And incredibly bizarre.

Second.Freaking.Person.

Academic scholars argue until this very day if a comma in Ulysses was set intentional, or if it was simply an human error. Nobody will argue about Nighthawks, not now, not in 100 years. Which is a shame, coz yeah, Nighthawks is as fucked up as it is genuinely great. The writing is stellar (think Hunter S. Thompson butt-fucking William S. Burroughs), the plot intriguing and tightly structured, the characters fully developed who live actual and real lives, but they also feel like an astronaut free-falling in open space. It is as complex as it is challenging and while I don´t think of books as complicated Nighthawks sure as hell needs a ton of work and time to invest.

It´s an LSD/booze ride, heavily borrowing from pop culture and/or political references, surreal to the point of melting away your brain cells. It´s imaginative and scatterbrained. It is also everything your momma warned you about when discovering the smut magazines hidden under your bed. It´s a Dali painting. It´s art, baby. Forbes West gives you the middle finger while writing some of the most skilled prose I can think of.

Nighthawks is also as flawed as flawed it can be. At times he is overly descriptive, at other times Forbes West simply doesn´t give a shit. Or maybe he does and makes you believe he doesn´t. I don´t know. The world-building is alien - d´oh - while almost being familiar.

Sarah Orange could be you, she could be me, she could be anyone.

Nighthawks, and that is pretty much a given, will remain an excersise in futility, and that is sad, really, coz nobody cares about a book written in second person. I say this without a hint of irony or even sarcasm. I do believe trailblazers like Forbes West are very much needed to keep literature fresh and alive. I applaud the oddballs and outsiders, those who try something new and different even if it means they fall flat on their ass. It takes a certain kind of bravery/insanity to do this and at the same time strongly and genuinely believe in what they do will have an impact.

This very moment some misunderstood genius* (and **) is writing a book. Once published it might be ridiculed and mocked because it is too weird, too off beat, too messed up for it to be really understood. If he is lucky. Or flat out ignored if he is not so lucky. Nighthawks has a strong stand in both camps.

* I also believe that 100% of all those self-declared geniuses are simply delusional dimwits.

** Forbes West? He is just insane.

Yeah, Forbes West hates my guts. That´s the only reason he forced Nighthawks upon me. I have said it before, and I say it again: Fuck you, Forbes West!

Second. Person. Asshole!

Nighthawks at the Mission - Forbes West Okay Hunter S. Thompson. Keep up with me.

An Adderall and alcohol fueled, dangerous dream of a novel, in a nightmarish paean to Waits and Kerouac, Burgess and Kubrick, Forbes paints a LSD fueled journey down the rabbit-hole with his stunning brilliance of imagery, drowning in surreal pageantry. He drags you, literally, into a different world, a world of multi-coloured dragons and breathtaking vistas, where nothing is ever what it seems. Or is it?

Forbes’ prose is brilliant, a searchlight reaching across a blasted land. Sandpaper sliding across exposed nerve endings, the frisson of dread before the beast of the night explodes from on high. The smell of carrion upon the night wind, sliding across the senses. As Michael Bunker puts it, (http://alturl.com/v78g3) Nighthawks at the Mission is "an epic, fantasy, sci-fi, tour-de-force." I don’t know whether to hug Michael or hit him – his review of Nighthawks is everything I wished to say about the novel. Drat him, anyway, for stealing my thunder! (Yes, I now have a crush on him for reaching into my soul . . .)

Visualize, please, a world of seven moons. A world of light and storms, of death and life carried out on an unimaginable scale. A world where nothing, and everything is, and is not, what it seems. Nighthawks reads like the bastard offspring of A Clockwork Orange and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – "two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers.... A quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls." All consumed on the deck of the Queen Mary as she sails towards a new and shocking world of dreams and illusion.

Not everyone is going to love this book as I do. It is a twisted and bacchanalian view into a quirky, funky and totally surreal mind, a mind not everyone will enjoy or appreciate. Pity. If you require all the little bunny-rabbits to have lovely, silky brown fur, don’t bother. These bunnies have brilliantly coloured fur, warping and twisting through serpentine mirrors, razor-sharp teeth reaching out through blood-stained maws. They are shockingly alive, reaching into your mind to dazzle and tease, leaving you breathless and dazed, deep beneath the sea of darkness within your own mind.

And the tail-lights dissolve, in the coming of night, and the questions in thousands take flight…

Very, very highly recommended – buy the ticket, and take the ride, a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue Label and a vat of colourful pills by your side . . .