The Night-Coloured Pearl: A Taoist Adventure

Martha Wilson is Canadian correspondent for the Japan Times (Tokyo) and
a Toronto-based freelance editor and writer.

Part science article, part fable, The Night-Coloured Pearl takes us on a
meandering journey through the lives of two lovers, Chalney and Ashta.
Ashta has all the characteristics a heroine needs: alluring beauty,
mysterious charm, womanly grace, and the wisdom of a priestess. Chalney,
for his part, has equal measures of strength, skill, and ingenuity.
They’re a couple of paragons.

Trouble invades this fairy-tale setup pretty early on and in a number
of forms. We get violent and gruesome deaths, murders, kidnappings, and
more. Through it all, Chalney and Ashta maintain their aplomb and their
determination to be reunited. The story opens with the hero’s exile
from his beloved island home, Padenom (or “No Name”). Fate drags
Chalney to the sinister mainland, where he falls into the hands of the
omnipotent Padroni. Can he get Ashta back? Can good triumph over evil?

In this all-too-familiar story, Renivaro interweaves Eastern religious
teachings and margin notes from science articles. (“I’m sorry,
Segnor Rawolfe. The chemicals that we’re most interested in here are
called neuropeptides. They’re little fragments of protein.”) The
book’s science-fiction qualities may tire readers with a taste for
more traditional fiction. And the prose is needlessly redundant at times
(“The stage was set for the historic game. History was in the
making”). Still, the ins and outs of this extravagant story may pique
the interest of readers with a taste for the unconventional.