Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice-for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Highly encouraging work overall.Īre we not men? We are-well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).Ī zombie apocalypse is one thing. Only in the final quarter does Shinn's control slip into flabby, annoying repetitions. And the big question remains: Will Gabriel and Rachel ever stop fighting and get together? Taut, inventive, often mesmerizing, with a splendid pair of disaffected, predestined lovers. Gabriel, who knows that Jovah will hurl firebolts should the Gloria fail, has other ideas. Raphael, meanwhile, no longer believing in Jovah, refuses to watch over the people and encourages every sort of wickedness to prevent the Gloria, he is willing to capture or even kill Rachel. Though Gabriel plucks her from slavery, the two fight at once, since Rachel sides with the servants and Samaria's downtrodden folk and distrusts angels neither will she reveal whether she can sing, a talent vital to a successful Gloria (Gabriel, of course, sings like a dream). Then, quite by accident, he comes upon her in the house of a rich nobleman, where she is a slave. But when Gabriel goes to claim her, he finds the remote village long destroyed, with no sign of Rachel. Josiah announces that Gabriel's bride shall be Rachel. At the next Gloria, or festival of song, the angel Gabriel will take over the duties of archangel from old Raphael, so he asks the oracle Josiah, who Jovah has decided will be his bride. Flying angels have been ordained by the god Jovah to watch over the people of Samaria. An odd, science fiction/fantasy hybrid from the author of the 1995 paperback The Shape-Changer's Wife.
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