(Though it seems to be trotting along at #11 on the bestsellers list, so who knows? I've been wrong before.*)

Big ups to the marketing flacks at Random House who came up with not only a handful of websites and blogs for the fictional companies and characters in "The Traveler" but also the brilliant idea of an author who's so "off the grid" that he refuses to promote his book whatsoever. They say that he only communicates via untraceable satellite phones (using a voice distorter) and somehow directs his big fat payments to some offshore bank account. There's been some conjecture that "John Twelve Hawks" is merely a nom de plume for a well-known author who's seen his commercial success wane recently, but my theory is that JTH is actually a 30-something Midwestern woman who's really into live-action roleplaying games, Celtic Frost, and purple velvet. It's possible that the only other thing she's published is X-Files slash fic. (I like to imagine she calls herself Ophelia, as her birthname, Rhonda, wouldn't fly in her local "Vampire: The Masquerade" troupe.)

When I got an advance reader's copy, I snickered and hooted at it. I felt moderately ashamed to be in possession of it. (In retrospect, after seeing the disturbing number of middle management-type folks with the new Harry Potter on the train this morning, I had nothing to be embarassed about.) I read the first page and tossed "The Traveler" aside with the intent to maybe pick it up later. Eventually I did.

And I'm not gonna lie. I enjoyed the book. (Heck, Janet Maslin liked it.) It's a sprawling tale of Maya, a member of (the tribe? race? cabal?) the Harlequins, a fearsome, warlike people who have some sacred covenant to protect the (tribe? race? cabal?) Travelers, who can travel to different planes of existence, not unlike that one friend who you'd bring with you to parties and he'd disappear for a couple hours and eventually you'd find him in the guest bedroom watching the party-thrower's "home movies," eating a ham sandwich and pulling from a bottle of the party-thrower's cognac.

You can read a plot summary in 146 different places online, but suffice it to say that Maya discovers that she has to protect two Traveler brothers (Gabriel and Michael, GET IT???) before the evil Evergreen Foundation gets a hold of them and makes them go into the future and find out who wiins the next 30 Superbowls.** Madcap follies and hijinks ensue as you can well imagine, and the ending is nebulous enough that there's still enough material for the other two books in the Traveler trilogy.

Speaking of material, the book is fucking chock-a-block with the minutiae and wherefores of the lives of Super Seekrit Ninja Protectors. Picture The Matrix crossed with the Loompanics catalog. (Oh, you can purchase the birth certificates of dead people and assume their identities? Oh, you can hide your saber in a camera tripod? REALLY? JTH and I must have watched the same episode of TJ Hooker.)

Like other books of its genus, "The Traveler" is super-duper plot-heavy. Which is just as well, because the writing veers into the purple when it's not. "Telling, not showing," that chestnut from the first day of Creative Writing class at the local community college, yodels from every other page. However, the plot moves so quickly that only a pedant of the highest order*** would focus on this--I mean, it's kinda like inviting a hobo into your house and being shocked when he poops on your couch.

(Where was I going with this?)

My chief criticism of the book--and maybe this could've been cleared up in revisions--is its logical inconsistencies. One character, estranged from his Japanese father, is described as refusing to learn anything about the culture as a child, and lo, three pages later, he's fluent in Japanese, having studied it since childhood. Another character explains how he wasn't allowed to watch the evil television growing up but then, a few pages later, he describes a trick he learned from a TV show. Whatever, you might be thinking. But these things crease me.

So, "The Traveler," despite its formulaic Good vs. Evil premise, is extraordinarily creative, and occasionally even unputdownable. Good going, Ophelia! I hope the first thing you did with that seven-figure advance was make an appointment to get that hairy birthmark removed from your back. If anyone wants to borrow my copy, you can have it when I get it back from my coworkers.

*This is actually not true.
**This is actually not part of the story, but I think it would've been a good subplot, no?
***::cough::