Of Gods and Monsters: a review of the Kelvoo series

Kelvoo’s Terra: An Immigrant’s Tale (Kelvoo’s Chronicles Book 2) and Kelvoo’s Teachings: An Unwilling Ascent to Godhood (Kelvoo’s Chronicles Book 3)

Copyright 2023 and 2024, Phil Bailey

I was about two-thirds the way though the second of the Kelvoo series when the third book came out,so when I finished book two, I went straight to the third book and read through it. Thus, this review covers both books.

Kelvoo’s Terra: An Immigrant’s Tale follows a similar narrative arc that Testimonial did. Humans are on their very best behavior. Think Star Trek’s Federation, with candy sprinkles and unicorns added. Deeply ashamed of the treatment the kloomar received at human hands as described in Testimonial, they have all but abolished war and racial strife and strive to live up to the standards of Kelvoo.

I’m an incurable optimist, and thus an unendurable burden to everyone who knows me, so I found this pleasant reading. After a while, I began to wonder about such plot devices as dynamic tension and peripeteia. Kelvoo is a wonderful being, so when does se get what’s coming to hem? In short, where are the baddies?

There’s actually historical allegories for the unusually good behavior by the humans in Terra: post-war Germany, or the effect of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” on American social conscience.

But you can’t have a novel without baddies. It’s a law of some sort.

As in Testimonial, the baddies show up in due course, and the story then takes an increasingly dark and dramatic turn.

Kelvoo, along with the two human girls (Brenna and May) se fostered in the wake of ses abduction and subsequent rescue from Jezebel’s Fury have been living for several years on Kuw’baal. Several years have passed since ses return home, and Brenna is about 17 and May perhaps 13. Kelvoo accepts a chance to go to Terra to lecture. While Kelvoo is perplexed that people want to hear what se has to say about anything, se believes the girls will benefit from experiences on a planet they had only heard vague stories about. That, and they would be able to see such things unknown on Kuw’baal such as blue skies, stars, and wild varieties of plants and animals.

After several months of a nearly idyllic life, Kelvoo’s curiosity is tweaked when se learns of a small nativist group called the Human Independence Movement. Se is honestly perplexed at the notion that non-human sentients are evil and somehow poisoning the blood of noble humans. Se mentions them on ses weekly broadcast and inadvertently gives oxygen to the tiny hate group.

The rise of reactionary fascistic movements and hate groups has been of major concern in the west in recent years, particularly here in the United States. Bailey deftly paints a chilling image of how such a group attains power and what happens when they do. In itself, that makes Terra a brilliant allegory for our times. Bailey resists the urge for satire; for example, the leader of HIM isn’t a kind of orange Jabba the Hut.

But things get very dark, as hatred and dissent rive the planet, a cosmic mirror of the rifts within Kelvoo’s own family. As in Testimonial, Bailey shifts from an idyllic tranquility to fierce horror and suspense without grinding the gears. It makes for a fascinating read.

Kelvoo’s Teachings: An Unwilling Ascent to Godhood

Bailey’s third book in the Kelvoo series follows his unique character as se unwillingly is brought back to Terra by human acolytes determined to make sem a god. Kelvoo’s personal and emotional growth continues, even as se involuntarily brings out both the best and the worst in humanity.

It’s no spoiler to relate that Kelvoo is taken back to Terra where se is adulated as a god-like figure. It’s the opening chapter, and it’s right there in the title.

Some fifty years have passed since the events in Terra. Kelvoo is still a fairly youthful 100 (ses species live on average about 400 Terran years) and Brenna and May are both approaching seventy years old.

Having escaped the horrors of Terra under HIM and the subsequent civil wars, Brenna is doing charitable work on another planet, Exile, and May lives near Kelvoo on Kuw’baal. Terra itself is isolated from the rest of the galaxy, with contacts scant and often oblique, as in the days of Soviet Russia, or Red China or North Korea today.

But then a human describing himself as Terra’s ambassador to the Planetary Alliance shows up. Kelvoo is puzzled since there has been no known diplomatic contract, but eventually is willing to listen to the human.

He explains that Kelvoo is seen as a Master Teacher on Terra, akin to the Buddha, and he wishes for Kelvoo to come to Terra as Teacher for the human race. Kelvoo refuses, but it turns out that ‘no’ is not an option.

Kelvoo finds semself as Messiah to a fanatical planet-wide cult, one just starting to develop the inevitable rifts and sects such movements always suffer from. As an unwilling godhead, se’s in about the worst position one can imagine, and things only get worse.

It’s a great trilogy, unpredictable, sly, sophisticated and utterly memorable. It’s a refreshingly original take on Contact, and the subsequent events.

The kloomari (Kelvoo’s species) are amongst the most brilliantly realized aliens to be found, and the other intelligent species in Bailey’s universe show promise, leading me to hope that he will expand in future books on this original new universe and humanity’s role in it.