THE CENTURION

A supernatural knight-errant referees the war between heaven and hell in this Byzantine occult thriller.

Thanks to a celestial error, Jerald is the first human born without a soul. Except for a sense of emptiness, it’s all upside: He doesn’t sleep, age or die. The archangel Michael recruits Jerald to become Jericho, Centurion of the Lord, whose murky task is to “keep the balance” in the unending struggle between the minions of God and Satan. On the streets of New York, it’s a pretty desultory fight, and Jericho–aided by his magic Blade of Babd–is charged with enforcing its many rules, including what angels and devils can do to humans and each other, and how to enter and exit from the mortal plane. There are even rules on how to break the rules. With so many different orders of angels and demons, and so many talismans, spells and ancient volumes of occult lore to follow, the book is like a cross between Paradise Lost and Dungeons and Dragons. The author turns this scenario into a deadpan noir mystery. When a Hittite dragon-god starts slaughtering angels and demons alike, Jericho teams with fetching New York police detective Naomi to hunt down the perp, assisted by debonair demi-demons, nerdy, perpetually beaming angels and Death, who turns out to be an insouciant blonde in a black cocktail dress. While Little includes too much clunky exposition about the rules of magic, he spins a deftly imagined landscape that mixes enchantment with realism.

A teeming fantasy world filled with intriguing characters.