Review of Glass Children by Carlton Mellick III

A book to finish in one sitting. One with a purposely transparent message. 

CM3 airs a lot of grievances about today’s generation gaps, while lobbying for some semblance of understanding between divided Americans. He includes a bloodbath for the sake of the Bizarro label. It seems more like an episode of Black Mirror though, than a typical Mellick book.

According to one writer’s definition of Bizarro fiction, books fitting into the genre should have three layers of fantasy or science fiction in order to be considered Bizarro. For this example I could only see two layers.

Not only are children made of glass, they might have other special abilities as well. The nature of their existence is misunderstood widely, their ultimate purpose is revealed in the final two chapters, and their power to change society. You thought this would be a book about the inability of the contemporary generation to cope with the harsh realities of life, but it is really about every generations’ inability to do that. I think this was the wiser course for the author to take and it saves the book from being a too shallow examination of what the reader is likely already aware of.

I would recommend checking out his book called The Bad Box, which has more Bizarro stylings, but still deals with children and that inability to cope. It was far more elaborate and creative. Glass Children comes off as a bit preachy. Mellick is consciously laying it on thick because it’s satire. He is capable of approaching social topics from a slant, with oblique symbolism, but sometimes he just attacks a subject head on.

This is the 40th book of his I’ve read.