The Gaia Chime

What can cause the end of the World? A massive explosion, a meteor the size of the moon tearing it in two? What would cause the end of the World and what would cause the end of humankind are two very different things. Our watery globe will still be spinning long after we are food for the worms, humans may die, but the planet will live on. What happens if the Earth starts to get annoyed with these itchy parasites walking on her surface, would she do anything about it? Something strange is happening in Johnny Worthen’s The Gaia Chime that suggest the planet may just be fighting back. 

Charlotte and Seth are at a prestigious tennis tournament, not because they were invited, but because they are documentarians filming the story of a young socialite’s rise in the game. They witness what will become the first of many such events, the young tennis player walks into the stands to murder his parents. Was it drugs or a psychotic break? Perhaps it was the droning noise that more and more young people are starting to hear. 

Not all horror novels are the same, it is what makes the genre great. For every crimson filled shlock horror, there is a more measured and philosophical outing. Gaia falls into this second category and is as much an exploration of the generational divide as it is about young people cracking open the heads of the old – although this does happen. 

The main protagonists Charlotte and Seth set the tone from the novel. Charlotte already felt like an outsider, so to be thrust into the buttoned up and very white world of the super-rich is even more alienating. Seth is an older academic who has lost the energy to remain counterculture. He just wants to spend on the credit card that came with the University grant for making the documentary. Somehow, they find themselves witnesses to several events, events that will draw them together. 

Gaia is a novel of ebbs and flows. Worthen never allows the pace to get away and instead brings it back to a sedate pace between action scenes. The characters and the readers decompress. This allows Worthen to explore some of the themes in the novel, the generational gap, the environment, politics. It is a matter of taste if these sections appeal. The characters are developed, but I sit in the more action side of a reader and would have preferred the pace to have been a little faster. It feels like a lot of weight is made building up to the conclusion, which may come as a surprise to some. I was able to adequately predict what would happen and it unfolded pretty much as I thought. 

With its deliberate languid pace, Gaia is more road story, than horror. Charlotte and Seth find themselves amid the action, but are they the main characters in this tale? I suggest that similar events were occurring all over the globe and we are following just a part of the story. The return to intimate conversations between the two were they think they may be the ‘witnesses’ is just self-grangerising. I would have preferred either a smaller or larger story, this book is pitched somewhere in between, and you feel like you are missing a more exciting book just around the corner. 

With abundant scenes of patricide, Gaia is certainly a horror book, but even with the gore I would consider it on the milder side. Instead, I consider this more of a straight fiction novel that uses horror elements to push the story forwards. It is more about the relationship between Charlotte and Seth, about their pasts and the inevitable future they are going to share. If that interests you, then the book has some interesting ideas to ponder.