Onyx reviews: K-PAX III: the worlds of prot by Gene Brewer

K-PAX introduced prot, an alien from the planet K-PAX, who occupies Robert Porter's body. Whether prot is really from outer space or a personality developed to shield Robert from violently unpleasant childhood memories is an open question. His appearances conveniently correspond with traumatic events in Robert's life.

On the other hand, prot has a special way with other patients at the Manhattan Psychiatric institute, treating their psychoses with simple-but-effective suggestions where years of traditional counseling failed. He also appears to know things about astrophysics unknown to Earth scientists, communicates with animals and claims to travel on a beam of light.

At the end of the first sequel, psychologist Gene Brewer (who shares the author's name) has apparently resolved many of Robert's issues. Robert is married and the happy couple has a young child.

Two years later, while Robert is bathing their child, prot reappears. This time, Robert retreats so far that Brewer cannot make contact, even through hypnotherapy. The alien plans to gather up one hundred beings—some human, mostly animal—to take back to K-PAX with him at the end of the year, never to return. On one previous occasion, when prot "left Earth," Robert went into a long period of catatonia. Time is running against Brewer, who must unlock the cause of Robert's latest regression in the few weeks remaining before prot departs.

While the K-PAX books are nominally about Brewer's efforts to solve Robert Porter's problems, they are equally about Brewer's attempts to unravel his own puzzle. He's nearing retirement but unwilling to give up his daily routine at the Institute, where each success with a patient only means there's place for another, equally needy, person. He has grown children with whom he has varyingly successful relationships and a wife who also recently retired. Brewer has trouble envisioning life without the Institute that has given his life meaning.

With his "out of the box" approach to curing some of the Institute's long-term inmates, prot forces Brewer to re-examine his training and look at each patient as an individual in a new light. The book stretches credibility somewhat when Brewer's colleagues, all serious therapists, readily turn their patients over to prot for treatment.

The book is structured around Brewer's frequent sessions with prot, but these segments are the least interesting parts of the novel. After the first two books, there's little new ground to cover here. Brewer attempts to contact Robert, occasionally converses with the other personalities Robert developed to handle different traumatic situations, makes a few breakthroughs, but mostly duels with prot, whose impressions of Earth and its populace haven't changed over the years. Even mild-mannered prot appears frustrated with Brewer's repetitive questions.

Some readers may be turned off by the novel's preachiness. The author uses prot as a mouthpiece for his views about the way mankind treats the planet and its non-human cohabitants. Each session inevitably returns to this subject.

A third book about prot may be stretching success a little too far. Like the fictional Brewer, it's probably time for the alien to retire and give up his lecture circuit. Maybe the next visitor from K-PAX (a fourth book is reportedly being written) will have something fresh to say about Earth and mankind.