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Synopsis of “24 Views of Mt. Fuji, by Hokusai”
This Novella is around 50 pages in my oversized collection, and would be larger in a normal sized world by far. Therefore I’ll be briefer with this review that with others due to the length.
Our heroine, Mari has arrived in Japan to do one final service for one Kit, who has recently died. She has a book of 24 of the 48 views of Mt. Fuji, which she adores, and she’ll be going from one place to another in these views, comparing them to the real life scene, and she imagines that the spirit of dead Hokusai is her companion for this quest. Her goal is to reach the mountain, where she will complete that final task she has do do for kit. Each View is listed as a sort of quick little page or 4 and has one story, day, or section.
As the story progresses, we find out more and more about her and her world. She is attacked by electric creations that are made from electronic devices, and she has to fend them off. She deals with personal attacks as well as her own body, racked with a deadly disease.
Using the Views as a spiritual Rorschach, we find out that she was married to Kit, and he was obsessed with living forever, and translated himself to the internet and died physically. He took her there as well, but she demanded her return because she was pregnant (which he never knew). He has become unhinged from any form of conscience, so she moves off the grid, raises her daughter, and trains for the day she’ll be needed.
After gathering power and learning how to make those constructs, she notices that he has been using his powers behind the stage to push things into the proper angles and avenues for control. She has created a weapon that should take him out, and she leaves her daughter and flies to Japan.
Eventually she passes an era with a legend of monks that gave up Shinto for worshipping dark forces in R’yleh, and the island sank beneath the seas. Soon a pair of monks of unknown and uncertain features will begin to track her.
At the end, she will find the two monks attack her, and they have webbed hands (reminiscent of the Deep Ones). She takes them out, and then Kit sees her, jumps out from his various electric possessions to enter her and begin to transform her to energy so she can enter the internet, just like before. As he dies, she drops her staff, with the circuitry, and it cuts off the power from others and keeps them from connecting. Kit is trapped in her body, albeit only temporarily until something electronic arrives. Then she commits suicide in a Japanese tradition in order to ensure that Kit will die with her. And she is most sad that she failed to make the 24th and final view of Hokusai in her abbreviated collection
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