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(HEMPWORLD
Summer 1996) Book Review: Castling by Rand Clifford 543 pages When I asked author Rand Clifford if he’d named his second novel, Castling, after the Cannabis Castle in Holland, he swore he’d never heard of the real-life grow house. Perhaps it was cosmic inspiration. This book includes all the quirks and issues of a hip, modern lifestyle: love, joy, drugs, infidelity, corporate flight, government corruption, environmental degradation, drug testing, AIDs, aliens, goddesses and sluts, princes and assholes, astral projection, talk radio, social commentary ad nauseam, and hemp history all poured out in testosterone driven verbal diarrhea. It is not merely a fun trip through cannabisland, it’s a test of your righteous indignation.. Jim, the protagonist, starts out by failing a “piss-test” and losing his job at a Spokane computer company. He then confronts his gorgeous wife-child about her affair with his best friend and dumps her. A chance meeting with a high school pal leads him to the Castle where he becomes an indentured servant in a mega-grow mansion in a bad part of Spokane. The Castle's occupants include Lew, the mastermind - a crystal controlled, RV killing, Trockenbernaise-swilling, save-the- world maniac who offers the Castle’s deed to Jim if he successfully cultivates several marijuana crops. Whizzer, another school pal is an HIV positive technomanic with a chip on his shoulder who messes with the minds of his neighbors to prove his socially scientific theories. Between these three guys, enough mental masturbation is performed to fill a sperm bank. Their ideas and extrapolations provide the grist of the book, and they leave no hot topic unturned. Although Rand has lots of brilliant ideas to express through his characters, these concepts need refinement. The women in the story are either goddesses or sluts who fuel Jim's fantasies. With the exception of a mysterious, yet highly opinionated alien phantom, these women have few thoughts to contribute and pose mostly as unattainable goals in and of themselves. The Castle’s sole female occupant, Gaia, is earth mother extraordinaire planted on a high pedestal, and represents everything the guys want to save the world for. What a surprise, she’s got great boobs, too. Growers will delight in Castling’s detailed account of the techniques of planting, growing, and harvesting an indoor crop of “the best bud in the universe,” and non-growers will be surprised at the scientific labor intensity of the operation. |
Castling makes entertaining reading for hemp
and cannabis fans, and may turn on a few lights in the minds
of others. The fact that cannabis is the subject of fiction is
truly novel. —Mari Kane MurrayCo Castling
is a book ahead of it's time. Not only is it an entertaining
story that draws on all the quirks and issues of a hip, modern
lifestyle, it has social commentary that some folks, including
Mari Kane, would rather not deal with. For those who find the
social commentary in Castling to be "ad nauseam," here
is real opportunity for a cathartic purge of any lurking noble
thoughts. For my part, I have not yet abandoned my search for
truth, so I find Castling to be a good fantasy, with a search
for truth thrown in as a bonus. Sorry Mari, but I think you flunked
the righteous indignation test. Castling Jim is used to the power of having a beautiful wife, money, and prestige: when a drug test at work ejects him for corpo-rate America, he finds a new and dangerous interest in the underworld which lured him from corporate security and finds refuge in Dog Town, a place where individuals test the limits of their fantasies and dreams. An intriguing, unusual story. --Diane Donovan |