Astoundingly intelligent. Next volume: Acts of God, set for January 2004.
Christological SF from an author (In His Image, 2003) who thinks really big.
The trilogy was self-published in the 1990s and, we’re told, sold 10,000 copies before Warner bought it. It’s the science pages that catch you up, although the Christology is damnably inventive (an exact description). Chief villain of installment two, set in 2019, is revealed to be Yahweh himself. In the story thus far, live cells from Christ’s body have been found in the Shroud of Turin, and a twin Christ has been cloned by Harold Goodman, who raises the Christ twin as his own son, Christopher Goodman. Nuclear war breaks out between India and rogue Pakistani forces, with China and Russia stepping in, and now Russia is no more, while a strange plague kills a quarter of mankind. Christopher fasts for 40 days in Israel’s wilderness and, returning, tells his companions, Decker Hawthorne, a journalist (who turns out to be Judas), and Robert Milner, former bigwig of the UN, that God wants Christopher to fulfill his mission begun 2,000 years ago. Meanwhile, nuclear war has killed or radiated 420 million. That’s a lot. But far worse is coming. As the Italian Ambassador to the UN, Christopher hopes to become secretary-general and lead mankind to a New Age. But two psychics arise in Israel, saying they are the Apostle John of the Christian New Testament and John the Baptist, and they preach woe. Indeed, they attract three meteorites to Earth, whose impact is dizzyingly well-described, wiping out the entire Middle East but not one Israeli, followed by a plague of giant bloodsucking locusts, then a madness of phantoms on ectoplasmic horses spreading death everywhere. Assassinated in the UN, Christopher rises from the dead after three days and reveals that he’s actually an ally of Lucifer, the good angel, while Yahweh is a sadist to be despised.
Astoundingly intelligent. Next volume: Acts of God, set for January 2004.Pub Date: July 13, 2003
ISBN: 0-446-53126-X
Page Count: 264
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...
Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.
Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: He’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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