Review of "The Minds of Mortals" by J.R. Castro

Score: 93/100 (9.3 out of 10)

Imagine having a genius-level intellect that never lets you rest. It never turns off. It's always digging, always delving, always hyperanalyzing. And the answers are never satisfying enough, so you create more problems to answer.

In The Minds of Mortals, author J.R. Castro explores the life of Jasper, a brilliant university student struggling to manage schizophrenia while navigating campus life.

This dark, introspective, psychologically-charged story follows Jasper as he explores various clubs and social subcultures, such as furry and gaming clubs, where he confronts the concept of submissive dissociation as a means of escaping reality.

Throughout the story, Jasper balances his romantic relationship with Sylvia and the guidance of his supportive roommate, Chad, while battling internal hallucinations like the shadow figure HIM.

We live in a world filled with a lot of unique individuals.
One person's "crazy" is another person's "cool."

This book reminded us a little of Roth by Jonas Romano Weiss, however, it's a lot more unsettling and uncomfortable. It's significantly less comedic as well, presenting a much more serious yet sympathetic view of mental illness. Another book this reminded us a lot of is Memoir of a Mangled Mind by Steven Simmons Shelton, which was a VERY dark book, above and beyond anything that even The Minds of Mortals offers. Shelton's book was about dissociative identity disorder, manifesting itself in an extremely violent second identity and a disturbingly self-destructive alternate identity.

Thankfully, Jasper never quite gets that extreme, but he does suffer from unsettling hallucinations, primarily HIM. And he does get annoyingly and fascinatingly philosophical similar to how Roth used to in Weiss's book.

This book does tend to feel dreary, even when Jasper seems to be coming to a positive understanding of otherwise-negative things like the Hiroshima/Nagasaki atomic bombings that ended World War II, or of the many strange, colorful characters he encounters.

This book does a good job at demonstrating that people like Jasper, for all their strangeness and eccentricities, are still necessary for society to function—for society to be rounded out. Yes, Jasper is an oddball, but he's also someone who is able to see things from a different, more enlightening perspective (like nuclear deterrence). And he's able to get people like Dr. Peterson and Sylvia to open up in ways they would've otherwise avoided (like about the son Dr. Peterson never talked about while still mentioning his three daughters, which says a lot about how even the best of us choose to repress and disassociate sometimes).

Speaking of Dr. Peterson, he's a really fun and likeable supporting character. He's the kind of professor we all loved in college: passionate, funny, clever, knowledgeable, understanding, and kind. That "philosophers are full of shit" line actually had us chuckling

Chad also seems like the kind of supportive friend that all of us need from time to time, serving as a human anchor for Jasper. On the surface he is a sleep deprived engineering bro who lives on instant noodles and Death Desire coffee, but underneath that chaos he is attentive, loyal, and unshakably on Jasper’s side. He is the one who notices when Jasper has skipped his meds, the one who tries to lighten the mood after heavy moments, and the one who reminds Jasper of his own strength when things get dark.

Sylvia, meanwhile, fills a more complicated but ultimately very touching role in Jasper’s life. At first she approaches him as a psychology student who is fascinated by his condition and wants to make him the subject of her thesis, which gives their relationship a slightly clinical, even transactional edge. Over time, though, that curiosity softens into genuine care and affection. She is there for him in the middle of a panic attack, she listens when he confesses his fears, and she shares quiet, fragile moments with him like their Ferris wheel ride at the Pike. Through Sylvia, we see Jasper experience something he rarely gets from the world around him: romantic attention that is actually patient, kind, and grounded in understanding rather than fear.

Jasper himself often seems like the reasonable, sane one in many situations (ironically). He's always trying to make sense of things in his mind. For example, he's able to try to provide explanations for the wild people, hobbies, and lifestyles he encounters, no matter how far fetched they seem to most of us. In an interesting sense, it's possibly because Jasper is such a oddball that he's able to empathize with other eccentric people.

He thinks to himself:

"Are people to blame simply for pursuing their fantasies? Is that such a bad thing? Jasper
thought about this, and in the end his eyes opened up to a world he never knew for being this
way, his previous closed-mindedness and hard-liner beliefs keeping him from seeing what he
saw. It wasn’t fair for him to denounce these people. He was no one to take away their happiness
or criticize them for it. Whatever contempt he bore before had mostly subsided by this point,
seeing for himself a reality which was embedded deep into fantasy--a reality that the furries on
this site created for themselves."

However, this book does tend to get depressing. Yes, there are light moments here and there, especially when Jasper is coming to a more positive understanding of people and when Dr. Peterson and Chad are feeling like themselves. We still found ourselves feeling miserable through a lot of this.

Part of it is just how persecuted and judged everyone in this book seem, even when one of the core messages of this book seems to be tolerance and acceptance. You just feel the walls closing in around you, like a claustrophobic feeling. We constantly felt like we needed to close this book and/or put it down because it was dampening our moods.

We think this kinda demonstrates and exemplifies what Jasper and others with mental illness must go through: like being in a cage you can't get out of. You just have to live with it.

There are some nice lines and passages in this book. For example:

"Were these people that afraid? he asked himself often. Or were these people so involved in their own worlds that they didn’t want to think about the horrible things happening?
It was almost as though people put up a glass wall, a wall that was see-through but
soundproof. They knew what was happening around them but chose to block out the noise and
the fear. And he noticed this happening with the social clubs he was a part of. The Anime,
Gaming, and Furry clubs all were hesitant to bring the issue up. And even the Philosophy and
Poetry clubs didn’t want to mention it."

“Reality is meant to be lived, not just understood, though understanding it may be the key
to living a better reality.”

"Though his medicine would take a while before feeling its effects, Jasper could already
feel his mind come awash with relief. It was a feeling of calm, though not necessarily serenity. It
was just enoughs enough control to not lose control. The dam did not collapse from the hole
through its wall, though it still leaked and was only temporarily sealed. It was a feeling of having
one’s feet planted back on earth, not feeling aloft in the sky and unable to remain on the ground."

This book has not yet been published. Stay tuned!