A weird fantasia about key figures of Judeo-Christianity and Islam.
A writer offers an alternate history for the Abrahamic religions.
Olson opens his slim work by telling his readers that he’s been hearing the voices of God and Jesus in his head since he was 4 years old. The author discloses that he has learned many things from these voices. In the beginning, he writes, God created angels, and one was named Allah and another Satan: “Allah was chosen over Satan to start God’s plan and make man, woman, the animals, and all who live on Earth.” To the readers who will naturally find this claim confusing, Olson asserts that the reason Allah’s name does not appear in the Bible is because it was intentionally replaced by the term “Holy Spirit” or just “God” by two popes named Innocent. According to the author, these popes also changed all of the stories about Jesus, whom Olson calls Noel. The author claims that Noel is actually a son Allah had with his angel wife, Oceanna. When Jerusalem fell to Muslim forces, Olson writes, both popes and a Jewish rabbi “agreed to take Allah out of the Bible” and had everyone who knew about the decision murdered. These popes had the Knights Templar hide illicit scrolls “in caves in Jerusalem.” Then, for good measure, the duo had those knights hunted down and killed. Olson continues to deliver vivid revelations throughout his earnest work—he tells his readers, for instance, that the famous line of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane “Take this cup from me, Father” was actually inserted into the Bible by Satan in order to torment Allah and Noel. Much of this material is intriguing in a fantastic vein. But all of Olson’s historical claims are decidedly questionable, which will give many readers looking at his declarations about divine conversations pause.
A weird fantasia about key figures of Judeo-Christianity and Islam.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5320-9190-2
Page Count: 54
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Spanning centuries and continents, this is a darkly romantic and suspenseful tale by a writer at the top of her game.
When you deal with the darkness, everything has a price.
“Never pray to the gods that answer after dark.” Adeline tried to heed this warning, but she was desperate to escape a wedding she didn’t want and a life spent trapped in a small town. So desperate that she didn’t notice the sun going down. And so she made a deal: For freedom, and time, she will surrender her soul when she no longer wants to live. But freedom came at a cost. Adeline didn’t want to belong to anyone; now she is forgotten every time she slips out of sight. She has spent 300 years living like a ghost, unable even to speak her own name. She has affairs with both men and women, but she can never have a comfortable intimacy built over time—only the giddy rush of a first meeting, over and over again. So when she meets a boy who, impossibly, remembers her, she can’t walk away. What Addie doesn’t know is why Henry is the first person in 300 years who can remember her. Or why Henry finds her as compelling as she finds him. And, of course, she doesn’t know how the devil she made a deal with will react if he learns that the rules of their 300-year-long game have changed. This spellbinding story unspools in multiple timelines as Addie moves through history, learning the rules of her curse and the whims of her captor. Meanwhile, both Addie and the reader get to know Henry and understand what sets him apart. This is the kind of book you stay up all night reading—rich and satisfying and strange and impeccably crafted.
Spanning centuries and continents, this is a darkly romantic and suspenseful tale by a writer at the top of her game.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7653-8756-1
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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