Jim Morrison's Adventures in the Afterlife

Book excerpt: Part devil, part angel, the specter of Jim Morrison has haunted America's consciousness since his premature death in 1971. His spirit seemed dark, and the graphic despair of his Lizard King persona reigned supreme in his lifetime, but Jim Morrison died with a smile on his face. Was his journey through the afterlife as tumultuous as his journey through life? This is the question Mick Farren answers in his fascinatingly complex novel based on one of the twentieth century's most enigmatic figures. Jim Morrison's Adventures in the Afterlife picks up the story of Morrison as he hurtles through a purgatory-like afterlife in search of some way to bring his soul to peace. Along the way he finds Doc Holliday--and together they find themselves chasing the restless fire-and-brimstone evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, whose soul has broken after death into two warring halves. McPherson's sexier half becomes the object of Jim's obsession, and as the two struggle to find each other in this disordered land, their wild, careening chase through a dozen dystopiae recalls imagined worlds as diverse as Burgess's A Clockwork Orange or Terry Gilliam's Brazil. This is a daring, hilarious romp through the landfill of millennial society. Possessed of an imagination that rivals that of any of our edgiest fantasists, steeped in the detritus and ephemera of three decades of pop culture, Mick Farren has crafted in this new novel a bizarre and compelling fantasia.