“A thought-provoking and absorbing dystopian tale with a New Age touch [that] balances the exploration of human relationships with environmental, social, and political issues … CALI THE DESTROYER is an illuminating and deep read, and the result is a must-read tale in tune with contemporary concerns that it dresses up as an Orwellian future.” Readers’ Favorite
Review by Max Morris ()
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I and others I’ve worked with have gotten serious, life-saving oomph and vital energy from the kinds of epic ideation and dialogic resonance Sol Luckman explores in his fiction and nonfiction writings.
I haven’t yet read his upcoming book release (GET OUT OF HERE ALIVE), but I'm profoundly looking forward to it. That’s a big thing for me to say—because I’m still rehabilitating my ability to read after multiple concussion injuries and severe complications over many years.
Reading is still really hard for me to do. I often don’t know if I’ll be able to do it. Still more often than not I actually can’t, and frequently have to put something down that I’d love to be reading because I’ve got to lean into recovery and reassure myself that eventually somehow later I’ll be able to try again. Paper or screen, it’s usually a huge question mark whether I'll be able to read and parse any text kind of thing.
Spoken word audio is the same kind of question. Will I be able to retain details or follow the narrative? Will I be able to complete what I’m trying to absorb? Will I remember any of it later? It's so hard to know; compound neurological injuries can really be a beast.
But Sol provides considerable leverage to me for this challenge, and in a vibratory format I certainly don’t tend to find elsewhere.
Sol’s books, the vim of his methodology, and his (effervescent) ways of navigating the world turned out to be a huge part of me beginning to repair my ability to read with eyes and/or ears at all, when I had almost totally lost those functions and despaired that I would ever be able to do so again.
It’s amazing that I get to say I’m looking forward to reading his next book, because I know that increasingly, I’ll be able to actually do so.
I was so determined to read CALI THE DESTROYER, it became one of my most important rehab practices over something like a year and a half—the book in text, plus the gorgeous audiobook performed by Theresa Dale—and then when I finished it, this year, I was flabbergasted that it could possibly be over and immediately had to start it again.
A familiar experience from other books of Sol’s that I’ve read—I’ve found nothing like CALI THE DESTROYER anywhere I know of.
Its narrative and style of storytelling demonstrates intriguing qualities, presents worthy questions, challenges complacencies, sparks exuberance, and invites powerfully meaningful discernments.
As I travel through my second reading, it’s a nutriment to me ongoing. (Already I see a third reading in my very near future. It appears I’m unwilling to put it down.)
I’m excited by every opportunity to continue paging (leaping, soaring, dreaming) through what Sol’s been building and sharing in the world.
What a pleasure it’s been to discover his books thus far.
It’s so wild that I know in my body I’ll get to read the next one too.
Delight and gratitude for the privilege.
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