Page 45 Review by Stephen
"That's all you got?
"My father hit harder than that."
Ooof!
You love alternate Earths with divergent histories, don't you? Stuff like LUTHER ARKWRIGHT, MINISTRY OF SPACE. Here's another and it's fiercely intelligent and fresh. There have been four substantial reviews of EAST OF WEST already - the first two by Jonathan; the second pair by me - so this is just a nudge to say that book five has arrived and that they are all very much deserving of your attention.
America which has been divided between Seven Nations, representatives of whom sit on a secret council and conspire against each other, vying for power, even though their goal is the same: to bring about Armageddon. It is their sworn duty, for they are The Chosen who follow The Message, a sacred text heralding the end of the world.
Fighting the same nihilistic corner are the Horsemen Of The Apocalypse, resurrected in EAST OF WEST VOL 1 as children. Well, three of them were: War, Famine and Conquest. Death was conspicuously absent.
Why? Death, had stayed behind as a white-skinned, white-haired, white-clothed, gun-slinging adult because he'd fallen in love with Xiaolian Mao, now leader of the Mandarin-speaking People's Republic Of America and a woman who, he discovered, had born him a child.
The hunt is now on for that son dubbed The Great Beast, Babylon.
The Child Horsemen want to kill Death's progeny; Death wants to save him.
Death wants to save the whole world.
It's that sort of a book, riddled with ironies, like the Endless Nation of Native Americans once so myth-based now being the technological champions of the modern world and, militarily, its mightiest: they have just conquered The United States of Texas.
Hahahahahaha!
