Book Review: Desert Oracle - Volume 1 - Strange True Tales from the American Southwest

Desert Oracle is a collection of stories collated over the past five years relating to the deserts of south-western America and the strange, bizarre stories that emanate from within them. The format in which these stories have been consumed over the years have shifted from newsletters, radio, podcasts and even live performances.  With enough stories to fill an actual book, it only makes sense that Ken Layne took the time compile and transcribe them into an official volume.

The range of the subject matter contained within the first volume of Desert Oracle ranges considerably.  There’s a huge variety of stories pertaining to the desert and its vast mysteries.  Some stories dive into how to survive the terrain and give readers recommendations for locations and trails to visit if they ever find themselves out there. Other stories discuss supernatural and extraterrestrial urban legends that live deep within the night sky of the open Mojave.  There’s a clear effort to diversify the range of stories in here, while the desert and its vast expanse remains a core constant.

While I appreciated the volume of stories in Desert Oracle, it’s hard not to feel the balance is heavily geared towards alien stories.  I’m not a snob towards these kinds of tales, I think they can be actually quite interesting, but the volume feels oversaturated with these stories to an almost distracting degree.  It’s cool to learn about the intrinsic relationship alien stories have with the sea of sand and rock, but I feel like they hog a lot of the page count unnecessarily here. When the book does delve into other stories its worth recognizing there interesting subjects touted here.

While the stories all have some core interest behind them, it’s hard not to feel held back by the format and structure of Ken Laynes writing.  I think the way he constructs these stories is rife with information and detail, but I feel Ken himself loses focus constantly when structuring these tales and it really shows.  He’ll mention names and locations pertaining to the topic of the story but then he’ll spend a good chunk of paragraphs talking about something completely separate and then he’ll ask you to return to a point he was discussing several pages ago.  There’s no consistency in his writing structure and it made working through a lot of these stories more of a struggle than it needed to be.

While I found the concept of this book compelling and I can attest to the genuine intrigue some of the stories here reflect; it’s hard to truly recommend Desert Oracle based on my overall experience with the story. I think it’s a good idea ruined by poor implementation.  Its stories lose steam due to the way Ken Layne writes them out and the balance of stories are just so heavily skewed towards one subject that it may as well be called Alien Oracle as apposed to Desert Oracle.