The One Percenters [Paperback]

Plot/Storyline: 2 1/2 Stars

This book reaches out and grabs you from the first page, even the first line. Ed, the protagonist, tells the story from first person viewpoint as he is relating it to another, at first, unidentified person.

In the beginning, Ed has abducted a young woman and tied her to a tree. His motivation is to get someone to listen to him. Finding out what he wants her to hear will keep you reading through most of the novel with that suspense in the back of your mind.

Unfortunately, his revelations turn out to be rather anticlimactic. However, it is still an interesting story with plenty of events that will leave the reader shocked and gasping.

Had I known to stop reading before the last chapter, this section would have received as many as 4 1/2 stars, maybe even 5 had it ended better. The ending seemed to be tacked on just to end it or to try to get an "Oh, wow! Now, I understand" kind of feeling from the reader, you know, like at the end of the movie, "Sixth Sense".

It doesn't work. When you think back on the events in the book and how the author related them, the ending makes no logical sense whatsoever.

Character Development: 4 Stars

Disregarding the last chapter, Ed's character was extremely well developed. When reading, I could actually feel his grief and anger. The story does a great job of depicting his slow descent into madness. The wild theory he comes up with to justify his actions reinforces this downfall. While not a very likable character, at least from a female standpoint, he still manages to garner extreme empathy from the reader.

Writing Style: 5 Stars

Mr. Podogursky's writing is a beautiful and horrific thing to behold. His stream-of-consciousness style is perfect for this novel. There is not a lot of specific dialogue between two characters, but the entire novel is a dialogue with Ed speaking to someone `off camera' so to speak. Because of this, the reader tends to forget and feel as though Ed is speaking directly to them.

Why horrific? Mr. Podogursky's style lets you into the mind of Ed, and it's a very scary place to be. The way the nonsequitors are tossed in makes for very realistic work.

The descriptions are vivid and stark. The flow of this writing style made me want to just keep reading and never put the book down. There is also plenty of humor, dark as it may be.

Editing/Formatting: 1 Star

There were several editing errors throughout the novel, missing commas and things like that.

The formatting was atrocious. The words "Page #" appeared at all intervals, especially troublesome when appearing in the middle of a sentence. The line spacing was bad, too.

Rating: R for Violence and Profanity

After his wife Jill is murdered, Edward Caine loses his sense of purpose and has trouble dealing with life. He retreats into himself and obsesses over his wife's death. Even when he begins to rebuild his life and moves to another town, Ed remains preoccupied with death, but it is not until he meets another woman and has her stolen from this life as well that he finally has a revelation. Ed is a rare individual: he is one of a small group of people known as "one percenters," whose sole function in life is to maintain the integrity of the human race, to cleanse the world of the inferior members who would muddy the gene pool.

Finally aware of his purpose in life and eager to fulfill his mission, Ed arms himself with booze, cigarettes, his wife's gun, and a belief that he is working for a greater good. Convinced that he is now a part of nature, Ed abandons his home for the woods. And over the course of the next year, he carefully selects and destroys those members of society whom he deems to be flawed.

Ed knows that the outside world considers the service he is providing to be murder, so he plans one final act of violence to fulfill his destiny. What he plans will shake the foundation of a world gone haywire and will transform Ed from mortal to savior of humanity.

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If you are looking for a bit of dark fiction to distract and entertain you, look no further than John Podgursky's novella The One Percenters. This is a mixture of horror and psychological thriller that will hold its reader shocked and mesmerized as they travel through the nightmare of the narrator's existence.

As we begin the story, we are caught up in the narrator's tragedy. Even though it is evident that he has committed a horrible crime, Ed seems initially to be a sympathetic character. But as Ed loses his grip on reality, we realize that there is more going on than he tells us about. And as we get to know Ed a little better and his mind begins to open up to us, we see the frightening and insane landscape that exists in his head. And he is no longer sympathetic...he is horrifying.

Ed's story is told as a memoir. He is either speaking or writing his story to a doctor in whatever facility he resides in. He addresses some of his comments to "you" meaning the doctor, but after a while, it feels as if Ed is actually speaking directly to the reader. The result is personal and quite chilling.

In the character Ed, Mr. Podgursky has given us a wonderfully unreliable narrator, and I spent much of the story trying to puzzle out exactly what is happening with him. How much of what he tells us is real, and how much is a fabrication of his unstable mind? Just how crazy is a guy who will abandon his life and go on a year-long murder spree to make up for where natural selection has failed? This person sees himself as a god, a savior of the human race, and he justifies his actions over and over again during the course of the narration. Towards the conclusion of the novella, I had convinced myself that I knew the story beneath the madman's ramblings, and I even felt somewhat smug and clever for having figured it all out. Wrong. I was completely and utterly wrong. At the end, Mr. Podgursky tosses us an unexpected curve that changes the entire story and that took my breath away.

I enjoyed reading The One Percenters very much. The story surrounded me and pulled me straight into the mind of a madman, who then spoke to me on a very personal level. And one of the most uncomfortable and frightening aspects of this is that some of his ramblings made a horrible kind of sense to me. I ended this book feeling a little unsettled and quite entertained. This story is very well-written and executed, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone wanting a bit of a chill.

Offering a very distinctive narrative voice The One Percenters by John W. Podgursky captures interest with its first line. Edward Pritchard Cain is a unique and compelling lead character, but unfortunately there are elements within the novel that take away from it being a complete success.
Readers are asked to understand and sympathize with a killer from the start. Cain feels he is charged with a mission to restore the balance in a world where technology has interfered in the evolutionary process.
Mother Nature has tired of mankind messing with natural selection and has designated a select few to act in her stead. Cain sees himself as part of the One Percent of the population tasked with eliminating those who are alive due to money and technology. He considers it his place to take those people out before they pass on their bad genes. It's a compelling premise.
Cain does not buy into the assumption that humans are basically good. He has a heartbreaking view of the world in which the more "you love and feel, the more you realize how hateful the world is."
It felt like the novel would have benefited from a third person point of view instead of using the first person point of view. The overall structure of the novel is a bit confusing. We are led to believe he is writing his story to a doctor to explain his actions. But there are times where he speaks to directly to a "you" as if he is in the room with someone or addressing the reader - it is unclear which.
Unfortunately when the narrator addresses the "you" it is usually in an insulting manner. Cain is asserting his superiority, and it comes across as off-putting instead of drawing the reader in.
I wanted to sympathize with Cain, but was unable to. He claims to be evolved, doing Mother Nature's bidding, but his actions and choice of targets don't provoke empathy. He kidnaps a young woman named Samantha James to tell her his story. He has her tied up to tree, whimpering in fear, and but supposedly he just wants her to listen to him. Also, Cain's killings don't leave the reader feeling like he is creating a better world. These aren't evildoers he is removing.
The author unfortunately lets his character fall into categorizing women as angels, freaks, or sluts. This really disconnected me from the piece and again felt insulting.
There is a moment where Cain runs into a female One Percenter. She acts as his mentor for a brief time. The character of Darien was very intriguing, but not on the page for long. Again in this encounter, Cain comes across as superficial and not appealing. He makes a comment about how it was nice to sit with a woman who didn't intimidate him with her looks. At another point, he really estranges his female readership by commenting there are "too many angry bitches out there."
There were many excellent elements in the book, so it was troubling it didn't quite connect for me. There are some truly magical lines and fabulous writing within The One Percenters. Podgursky writes some of the best, most unique imagery I have read. He is especially skilled in conveying a sense of intimacy in relationships through his imagery.
The themes he tackles in the book are provocative. The narrator is supposed to act with regard to the betterment of mankind. We are taken through his desire for vengeance on those who treated him badly and brought out the other side to alignment with a higher purpose.
For me, the experience of this novel was captured in a magical and heartbreaking scene between Cain and a girl named Thelma. She is totally isolated and seems beyond caring about fitting in with others. She says she is "learning what I can from the shadows, and I'll use it in the next world. I'll rock that world.
I hope that Podgursky takes after Thelma and learns what he can from this effort. He has the skills, eloquence, and vision to rock the next book.