Doctor Gillespie's Discovery

by J.R. Duke

Research scientist Doctor Gillespie has made one of the most momentous discoveries in mankind's history of existence: that there is a biological basis for sexual orientation, a longtime controversial theory proven by the doctor to be factual, which means we actually are born to be the way we are.

Doctor Gillespie's discovery could very well remain a secret from the world known only by a fearful few who have found out about it before being publicized and intend to silence the doctor by whatever means necessary including assassination.

The unacknowledged leader of this criminal opposition to the discovered truth is perhaps the biggest homophobe in the world, a prominent conservative religious-political activist holding the public's ear captive with a round-the-clock televangelism talk show who uses his media empire to manipulate his massive audience into sharing his beliefs.

Is he powerful enough to undermine the truth about who we really are?

Author's Note: Please also read my latest blog post here for additional information: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

Genres: Science Fiction

349 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 16, 2015

About the author

Much like the narrator of his novel, Doctor Gillespie's Discovery, J. R. Duke lives alone out in the boonies on the big island of Hawaii where life is generally always peaceful and quiet, interrupted only occasionally by volcano eruptions, earthquakes, and hurricanes.

Reviews

[Kudrat Kaur · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a strange book.

If twists and turns would make a book great- then the sheer amount amassed in this book would make it legendary.

Still, I had a hard time rating this book, as well as reviewing it.

Simply because I haven’t read any other like it.

Or simply because it’s very difficult to say what you think about a book without giving examples. I can’t really give any of those, at least not from this book without spoiling it. That’s why I compiled them all and spoiler tagged them (there’s a lot). There are so many facets I have questions about, and this just goes to show that I will be thinking about this book for some time to come.

I can’t name any names, at least not very much without giving something away. (Also, I only realised this after finishing the story – but I couldn’t for the life of me remember what the main character was called. I didn’t even notice during my read, but as I tried to recall I could remember every other character’s name, except his. I tried going through it again, but nothing.)



There’s little I can say about this book because these kinds of books ride on their intensity, screwing with your mind to put more bluntly. It is because you don’t know what’s happening and what’s going to happen that you aren’t able to leave them. Which is also why I can’t give you hints, I can’t complain openly because those are also the points that make you barrell through it.

I quite frankly read this within a day. Give or take. Because I couldn’t really put it down. Because my brain was working in overdrive trying to make sense of what was going on.

Some books make you think a certain way, they make you think that the world is how it is because that’s what’s written.

That’s what this book did – and then didn’t again. And then did, and didn’t again. Over and over and over again.

This book, at times, felt like a soap opera. It definitely had similar qualities you can find in any day-to-day series.

A villain – who turns out to not be a villain – but is he one anyways?



Betrayal by those you trusted, but then finding out it wasn’t a betrayal? Only to find out again that it was, but then again that it wasn’t. Or was it one all along?

People coming back from the dead, because no dead bodies were shown so thinking of them as such is simply ludicrous of course. Soap-Opera logic.



A character that tries to do the best thing, follow his conscience, but is pulled in so many directions. Inadvertantly has to make the tough call, even though he finds out later that nothing was as he thought it was at the time he made the decision.

A character who takes the reality as it is presented to him as how it is. Doesn’t question it too much. Because, truly… There has been no reason so far to question it.



A character held so thoroughly in the dark – as well as the reader – that you don’t really know what to make of the story anymore.



There were many plot points I had trouble grasping. Making me unable to truly comprehend, but that might likely have been the author’s intention in the manner he was jerking us around.



That’s basically what he was doing. Jerking us around.

Making us believe one thing, that subsequently turns out to be false, only to be a truth mascarading as a falsehood, but then apparantly still be a falsehood that was never a falsehood to begin with but the truth. Or was it?



The author played with our minds. He played with the main character’s.

I didn’t know what to think of him. At times he seemed gullible, too naive. At times I thought he was dreaming up the whole thing. At times I thought, that if I paused reading this book now – I might never finish. I got frustrated, even though the main character didn’t seem to. I got pissed, even though the main character quite frankly didn’t hold a grudge – as he should have.

As mentioned earlier, my frustrations and questions have been compiled in the following spoiler tag.

I don’t know whether I should recommend this book or not. Some people are seriously going to dislike it, some people are going to love the bejeezus out of it – some people (like me) would have no idea what to do with it.

Uncle Billy.

Did he abuse the main character? That is one of the main questions for me. In the beginning it seems as though he came quite close to it. Finding the MC’s picture among the box of things further proving said point. Later in the story, a chapter called “Uncle Billy’s Secret” another proof for said point – but this dream running parallel to how the story commenced making it all seem as though it was a hallucination. Likely due to the pakololo. Then him turning out to be the main character’s father. Then, as his father did something of that sort ever happen? If it did, could this be the main character’s method of dealing with the trauma caused by the betrayal of someone who’s supposed to take care of you?

The Lies.

Not once was Annie truthful. Not once. First she’s a double agent for Doctor G. Entering Luce’s fold to steal back the document. Later she’s supposedly a double agent for Luce, trying to get Doctor G. Even later, she’s once again a double agent for Doctor G. She used her death to spur the main character into finding Doctor G. Doctor G’s murder at the hands of the main character was used to spur him to find Luce. But, Doctor G obviously isn’t dead seeing that ending.

Luce was just an additional liar added to the fold who caused more confusion than necessary.

Luce and Co.

Luce is supposedly an insecure guy whose hatred for himself is so great that he destroys himself basically by experimenting on himself. He sees differing degrees of sexuality as abominations, spurred by his own dismissal of his own “abnormal” sexuality.

Yet, he has Ultra Sheen at his side. Ultra Sheen – what the fuck is up with her/him? Seriously. The main character even sees her with a goon that was supposedly about to rape him, and yet it’s the “gay” part of it that makes him uncomfortable. Not, how this ploy would supposedly have been used to draw him in.

Regardless, obviously Ultra Sheen has one of hese “abnormal” sexualities, yet he/she is the right-hand man to Luce.

Also, Luce in the end tries to seduce the main character into going along with his plan. He wasn’t being very uncomfortable with using a supposed honey trap to capture the main character – yet, he’s hell-bent on denouncing his sexuality? I don’t know whether this is hypocritical, or him going to any length he possibly could to get what he wants.

It’s also majorly creepy.

Seriously.

The Main Character’s sexuality and his regard for sexualities considered “abnormal”

I don’t know what to think of this aspect of the main character, to be honest.

He isn’t necessarily repulsed by differing sexualities. Perhaps, uncomfortable – sure. But, not repulsed.

If the whole Uncle Billy confession at the end was true – then that means that the main character was thrown away by his birth mother for exhibiting characteristics that probably “outed” him. However, did he just repress himself greatly. Is that what this was? Is that why the main character doesn’t get his own love story? Is it his journey to figure out what’s going on?

The Discovery

Because both Doctor G’s VS Luce’s versions of what the Discovery actually was I don’t really know what to think about it. When Doctor G started explaining what she had discovered, it was frankly as though the author was presenting a lecture. I guess, that’s how one can transmit information on a concept that you are new to, but still. It felt as though I was doing homework for one of my classes, and the one thing that happens without fail while reading any of the texts for my classes is that I feel sleepy, and easily confused. It takes me multiple readings to understand what the fuck is going on. Same thing with the explanation of vita. It was a difficult concept to understand, and unless you let it sink in, quite frankly impossible. I laboured through though. Because I didn’t really have the energy to go through it again.

The explanation truly felt more like a Q&A session between a teacher and a student. Which it was, but then again – this is a story. Please refrain from boring me with this overload of information.

Though as the story went on you get a better idea. Then Luce’s version of events is put in.

The climax was great though, how the main character ended up figuring out which version of events was most likely real. Luce’s attempt to persuade ended up backfiring, majorly.

The MindTricks

Kind of got old, to be honest. I would have been more interested in the main character actually learning something by mindscan, but that was barely used. Mindsail and mindmail were genius though. I actually went back to read the prologue, which now made so much more sense.

The Time

I had so much trouble pinpointing exactly “when” this was taking place. When I started, I had this idea for some reason that it was playing during the 1960s, but as the story progressed… that didn’t seem quite right. The concept of virtual reality was mentioned – still relatively new, so the story was fast forwarded closer to the present. But, it was difficult to pinpoint. Yet, the backwards ideas of society in general felt too much. Though, I guess that’s still a prevalent mindset in society today regardless of the advances made in the past decades.

Perhaps the author did this intentionally, further solidifying the fictional nature of this book.

The Futures

Honestly, the futures presented to us… Both the ideal one and the non-ideal one – they’re both dystopias. One’s a utopia, but I’m cynical enough to not ever see that one happening and even if it did to not exactly see it for what it is. The other’s an obvious dystopia that our world is potentially on the road towards. Not just regarding human sexuality, but human ignorance in general – the inability to accept other human beings, to practice tolerance… War.

The Second Jesus Christ

This was borderline ridiculous. Though accurate. But still so over the top. It made the whole overly complicated plot even more unbelievable. And then Luce’s decisions inadvertantly leading to what was predicted. Perhaps during a second read I might see this in a less flashy light, but for now this is what I felt. When Luce started explaining the main character as the second JC.


Dealbreakers for some people (written down just in case)

- This is confusing. It fucks with your mind, over and over again.
- The antagonists are fluid in the sense that you don’t really know whose side you’re on. You don’t even know who to trust. And the sides keep changing as more information is added. Though this new information doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s reliable.
- The biggest of all. This is not a romance to any sense of the word.

This was a fantastical tale of a man whose journey across the world and back causes a potential paradigmatic shift as to how the world is run. It’s a story about sexual awakening, about becoming someone who should be comfortable with who they are – unless they want to live their lives not truly living. This is science-fiction. It’s fantasy. It’s a thriller. It’s got character development, revelations – harsh truths that some are simply not willing to accept, and it’s got a main character who is stupid yet smart at times.

It’s basically one huge clusterfuck and I suggest engaging at own risk.

Personally, I think I’ll read this book again sometime knowing what I know now. There were clues throughout building up to the climax, and this book is just interesting enough to warrant a second read. Perhaps at that time I might even bump up my rating because regardless of my questions, I don’t regret deciding to request this book. Because sometimes having a book that so thoroughly plays with your mind isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Or a book that makes you think about the state the world is in in a different light.

Overall, I feel there’s a lot left to be desired. The characters could have been expanded upon, the plot elongated, the dialogue improved – specifically the information dumps. However, it is still a worthwhile book in its entirety. It might be a bit difficult to get through though depending on whether any of the points mentioned above are deal breakers.

PS. I get the cover now, but doesn’t it seem as though it’s an arm with a brain tattooed on it?

PPS. I’d love it if there was more.

I received this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review
This review has been cross-posted on GBR

[LenaRibka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rounded up to 3 stars

This book is difficult to review because of two reasons:

I cannot discuss, pray or complain about the plot without giving away some important secrets.

I cannot myself actually say what I feel about it.

The main protagonist and the first person narrator leads a quiet lonesome and carefree life in
a cabin on the big island in Hawaii, that he inherited after the death of “Uncle” Billy, his single foster parent. It is where an alien presence - they prefer to be called this way - visits him.

The good news – they are friendly and polite, the only thing they want our MC to do is to deliver a massage to some Doctor Gillespie. The bad thing – they themselves have no idea where to find this mysterious Doctor, and our MC is not the first person they have asked to do this favor, but all persons they contacted before just disappeared without any trace. Means, someone is not interested in the fact that this message gets to its recipient, and this someone is dangerous.

The message itself was totally useless, IMO. It sounded like "you did a good job, Doc, and your discovery is the most important for the mankind, go ahead and share your knowledge with all people on earth". But it made me VERY curious about the discovery of Doctor Gillespie...

No, our MC doesn’t start immediately to look for Doctor Gillespie. He doesn’t even plan to consider this favor at all, at first. He is sure that it was too much “pakalolo” of the previous evening, but the alien presence has its methods, and our MC has no other chance than to set out for looking for the mysterious Doctor Gillespie.

What follows after…well that is crazy and totally utterly illogical and weird. Enemies become friends in order on the next page to betray to a greater extent, and vice a versa. Everyone lies to everyone; you can’t simply trust no one here. Actually this book is a big collections of the most bizarre nonsenses. The further the plot goes on, the more complicated and the less logical it becomes. Intrigues, double agents, hypnoses, hallucinations, dreams and of course, an endless chain of lies built up a core for this story. But even if this book is far from being a literary masterpiece, what the author masters quite well is to entertain his readers.

I’m though not sure that the author knew exactly what he was doing when he wrote it. I cannot imagine that this plot is a result of a thorough planning and not just a spontaneous result of an occasional flash of inspiration.

In spite of my many issues - this list could be very long, including the discovery itself, and the mysterious MC without a name and and and - I couldn’t put this book down! I just NEEDED to know how it would end.

A crazy hell nonsense ride with eye rolls and head shaking(in disbelief).

If you want to try something VERY different, you should give it a go.


**Copy provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review**

[Niko McQueen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, is the only word I could use to describe this book. It snuck up on me really quickly and before I knew it I was entranced by this story. I've already read it twice and I can see a third time in the near future. With so many twists and turns and a main character that I fell in love with I couldn't help routing for him. I would HIGHLY recommend this story to all my friends and family. Doctor Gillespie's Discovery gets my seal of approval.

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was asked to review this by Librarything.com

What an unusual find and I struggled to put this book down. Wow and twists and turns I kept twisting and turning myself.

I was intrigued right up to the end. I did not see this book coming nor the author certainly one to look out for

Recommended.