An engaging, offbeat, and Bible-inspired apocalyptic tale.
This first installment of a religion-themed SF/fantasy saga focuses on the high-tech but intrigue-wracked island nation of Atlantis and how a brilliant woman trusts science to rescue humanity from doom.
A dedication to God up front indicates Canadian author Cook’s antediluvian epic is sincerely meant as evangelical literature. But initially, readers encounter playfulness and semisatire that fall almost within hailing distance of dogma-bashing material like James Morrow’s Towing Jehovah (1994). Supposedly drawing from fringe history experts and Creation science, Cook depicts life in fabled Atlantis circa the biblical deluge. Humanity is high-tech and spacegoing (though penned in by an alien embargo) but, thanks to Adam and Eve, fatally decadent, divided, and driven to self-destruction. Especially significant is a looming military conflict with Lemuria, a fierce “Women’s Liberation” rogue state stopping at nothing for total control. Beautiful, psychic Atlantean science graduate Ithyanna foresees an upcoming apocalypse. Though tentatively a follower of Olympus-style deities, she puts her faith in rationalism and technology, plotting a starship escape of the planet’s best and brightest before it’s too late. Meanwhile, her adopted sister, an alcoholic “coarseneck” (redneck) with an affinity for “cargonaut” (country-and-western) music, repents and joins ex-technician Noah, a shunned disciple of the god Elohim. Noah, of course, is building a giant gopher-wood boat for his family and a menagerie of animals despite much public scorn and ridicule. God/Elohim—who appears as a talking lion like Aslan of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia tales—worries that Ithyanna’s scheme may spoil the whole flood thing. In this engrossing tale, treachery, arrogance, violence, nonbelief, and selfishness beset the eponymous hero’s plans and illuminate God’s true path. En route are enjoyable shoutouts to the Adam West Batman TV series, references to the movie flops Star! and Doctor Doolittle, and disguised versions of Kurt Waldheim, White nationalism, and Islam. If they aren’t too tempted to dig deeper for additional takedowns (was that supposed to be Oprah Winfrey? Madonna? Former President George W. Bush? Justin Trudeau?), readers will get a basically traditional exhortation urging redemption—complete with Gospel excerpts—attired in riots of rococo filigree and vivid anachronisms. This work certainly isn’t part of the Tim LaHaye/Jerry B. Jenkins school of Christian fantasy.
An engaging, offbeat, and Bible-inspired apocalyptic tale. (introduction, list of the nations, cast-of-characters guide, map)Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 271
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Let’s hope for more from the next book set in this world.
Sasha Cadell has survived against all odds, holding onto her loved ones and strangers as they take their last breaths—and that’s why she’s known as Death’s Angel.
For six years Sasha has lived in Haven, the underground society built to withstand nuclear war. Since the war, since her family’s deaths, since discovering she doesn’t get sick like everyone else does, Sasha’s life has been full of death and overfull with grief. While working in the Ward, Haven’s limited hospital, she stays with patients as they die. When Tristian Hayes, a unit commander of the Force, ends up as her patient, hanging on for his life, she pleads for him to stay alive. He does—upending her bleak ritual as Death’s Angel. Hoping to forget everything she’s seen and to numb the pain, Sasha leaves the Ward in favor of a role with a pickax, expanding Haven’s tunnels. Tristian, fiercely determined and stunningly stubborn, recruits Sasha to the Force for a vital mission aboveground. The story picks up steam with Sasha’s intense training to become the medic for Tristian’s tightknit unit. Together, they bear the weight of their unit’s survival and all that’s left of humankind. While in training, Sasha struggles to discern friends and enemies, but nothing is as challenging as facing her own demons. In this prequel to her debut novel, Conform (2025), Sullivan tries to accomplish a lot with both the worldbuilding and plot machinations, resulting in a convoluted story and flattened characters. The plot doesn’t have a satisfying payoff, but the romantic tension between Sasha and Tristian will keep readers engaged.
Let’s hope for more from the next book set in this world.Pub Date: March 24, 2026
ISBN: 9798217091027
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.
Using mystery and romance elements in a nonlinear narrative, SenLinYu’s debut is a doorstopper of a fantasy that follows a woman with missing memories as she navigates through a war-torn realm in search of herself.
Helena Marino is a talented young healer living in Paladia—the “Shining City”—who has been thrust into a brutal war against an all-powerful necromancer and his army of Undying, loyal henchmen with immortal bodies, and necrothralls, reanimated automatons. When Helena is awakened from stasis, a prisoner of the necromancer’s forces, she has no idea how long she has been incarcerated—or the status of the war. She soon finds herself a personal prisoner of Kaine Ferron, the High Necromancer’s “monster” psychopath who has sadistically killed hundreds for his master. Ordered to recover Helena’s buried memories by any means necessary, the two polar opposites—Helena and Kaine, healer and killer—end up discovering much more as they begin to understand each other through shared trauma. While necromancy is an oft-trod subject in fantasy novels, the author gives it a fresh feel—in large part because of their superb worldbuilding coupled with unforgettable imagery throughout: “[The necromancer] lay reclined upon a throne of bodies. Necrothralls, contorted and twisted together, their limbs transmuted and fused into a chair, moving in synchrony, rising and falling as they breathed in tandem, squeezing and releasing around him…[He] extended his decrepit right hand, overlarge with fingers jointed like spider legs.” Another noteworthy element is the complex dynamic between Helena and Kaine. To say that these two characters shared the gamut of intense emotions would be a vast understatement. Readers will come for the fantasy and stay for the romance.
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780593972700
Page Count: 1040
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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