Reviews

As World War I ravages Europe, a young French soldier returns from the brink of death as the instrument of an otherworldly force that leads him to England. There he confronts a small group of people privy to the secret history of the world. The conclusion of this trilogy, which includes The Werewolves of London (LJ 11/15/92) and The Angel of Pain (Carroll & Graf, 1993), becomes a voyage through time and space as well as a journey into the consciousness of the universe. Fans of speculative fiction will enjoy this ambitious and imaginative novel.

God is dead and the universe is breaking down in this climactic entry in Stableford's dark fantasy trilogy, which began with The Werewolves of London and continued with The Angel of Pain. Still alive are seven fallen angels who are fearful about what to do with the rest of their existences. To determine their futures, they pit their energies against each other in the likenesses of men at war. The story, which is as much a demonology as a novel, begins with Anatole, a French atheist wounded in France during WWI who finds himself tortured by agents of Satan, saved by Jeanne d'Arc and given a message he must carry to arthritic David Lydyard, retired English metascientist-and protagonist of the two prequels-who now thinks he's Satan. Stableford attempts a kind of Gray's Anatomy of the sensibilities of God-less angels as they try to grasp their own beginnings and shape their futures. With its cast of angels and world-wandering werewolves and a plot that considers space and matter, the death of Earth and a last chance for humanity, this richly inventive, sometimes achingly dense novel assures Stableford's place in the front lines of speculative fiction. (Dec.)