M. R. Leonard's Pilgrim
A Book Review
Now THAT’s a debut novel. Seriously. When I got an email from M.R. Leonard asking me to review his novel Pilgrims it sounded awesome. I mean, we’ve all consumed some type of Alien Invasion story at some point in our lives. It’s somewhat cliche when left to it’s own devices. I was just watching Will Smith’s Independence Day over the weekend. We all know the trope. But what I had never seen done before was an alien committed by Catholic aliens. How did that work?
Of course I’m not going to answer that questions. This is Jimbo’s. We never do spoilers except when we do. That’s official JOP. (Jimbo Operating Procedure) Usually, it’s an accident. Sometimes we’re just being buttfaces. It depends on our mood. But we’re not violating policy this time. It makes sense if you read the book. But if you really wanna know how, then reading Pilgrims is going to be necessary for your edification. (TWO POINTS FOR EDIFICATION!!!)
I also want to say this for the record: Pilgrims starts off with a prologue. (Stop whining. It’s actually entertaining and we do see the characters again later in the book.) It adds a lot of excitement to the beginning. All may not exactly be what it appears to be in the first three sentences of the book, however. Be patient. It’s not 1532 anymore.
That much having been said:
I love books that start off with a countdown to the thing. I’m not going to say what thing it is this time, but it is THE thing. At any rate, the countdown adds a lot of suspense and it provides the information that we need to get things started. And once Pilgrims starts, it doesn’t stop. There is no point where things just slow down and get boring. If you’re into navel gazing, there are other books to read.
If you’re in to character arcs, however, this is the place to be. I won’t say who. I won’t say what. I will say WOW. It all makes sense and it’s well earned, but the change is huge. I was happy to see it. It kinda made my day.
There isn’t a whole lot of violence in the book and the vast majority of what happens takes place offscreen. What fighting does occur onscreen is fairly graphic, however. It hits hard and then it’s gone. Leonard seems to want to make things as easy to deal with as possible, but some of it hits hard nonetheless. It’s all believable. Some of it left me a bit shook and that’s not easy to do.
There was something that felt unique about Pilgrims and it wasn’t until I was almost finished with the book that I figured out what it was: I’ve read a ton of Catholic fiction - I am a Declan Finn fan after all - and this is the only book I’ve ever read that falls into that character that doesn’t have a main character who belongs to the One True Faith. There is a whole lot of Catholic theology and symbology to the tome, but Austin DeSantis is an atheist who gets picked to talk to the Pilgrims simply because he teaches a spoken Latin class and that’s what they show up speaking. It’s an interesting take but it wasn’t what I expected when I went going in. That’s not to say it didn’t work. I loved it. DeSantis sees things in a way that most Catholics wouldn’t and misses things that most Catholics would catch. It’s just who he is.
The rest of the cast of character in Pilgrims is a mixed bag. There are devout Catholics. There are people who worship God in other manners than Catholics do. And there is no shortage of people that don’t believe in anything. That works because it’s realistic. Leonard is working with a whole planet full of people. There are going to be differences because that’s the way the real world works. I should know. I live here.
Most of the time anyway. There was that one time, with the angry woman and the frying pan, where I spent most of the week convinced that I was an alien from the planet Zargon, but that all squared itself away once my concussion started to fade. I’m normal now. Totes.
Stop laughing. We’re talking about a book, here.
At any rate…
The weirdest thing about Pilgrims might be the world building. Not because it wasn’t done right. It was done terrifically. It’s just that so much seems so familiar, and more seems like the type of thing I expect to see happen in my lifetime, that it almost feels like home. But then, it doesn’t. It’s like putting on last year’s winter coat and realizing that you’ve gained a few pounds. You can get the jacket zipped up, but it’s not comfortable anymore. That’s Leonard’s world. You recognize it, but it’s just a little too far off to really settle into.
There’s really no need to settle into anything though. I started this bad boy on Friday, Saturday was the Fourth of July so I was busy most of the day, and I finished it on Sunday. I went through four hundred and six pages like it was a magazine article. Actually, there were articles I read in college that it probably took me longer to get through. Pilgrims was that good. I mean, I don’t feel as incredibly educated as I did after reading a thirty plus page article about the historical inaccuracies in The Last Samurai, but I had a lot more fun. That counts for something as long as you’re not a college professor.
Thirty seconds or so after finishing Pilgrims, I bounced over to Amazon to see what else Leonard has for sale. I came up with a big, fat zero. I find this to be distressing. At first I thought I was hallucinating. Then I thought my Amazon app was broken. I actually turned my phone upside down and shook it to see if I could get another book to pop out. That didn’t work. But I guess I’ll live. For the record though, if you read this and want to read another book by Leonard you don’t get to blame me because there’s not one. Hopefully, he’ll fix that problem soon.
Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Exploding Ambos
Pilgrims
M.R. Leonard
Blue Castle Press, 2024
Pilgrims is available for purchase at the link below. If you click the link and buy literally anything from Amazon, I get a small percentage of your purchase at no additional cost to you.