Adventures in Godhood
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
When the god in the machine turns out to be a trickster hanging out in a clothes dryer...
A rash of exploding pigeons (and one self-detonating rat) signal the beginning of a strange quest for Toronto Police Detective Marty Breck and undergrad student Ellie O'Toole. Brought together by her 9-1-1 call about a haunting at a laundromat, they meet an entity calling itself Demonai.
Ellie and Marty quickly learn that their encounter is only the tip of the iceberg. Soon, they are launched on a search for answers, travelling across Ontario and figuratively back in time as they track down the trickster god's past victims and accomplices.
Yet it seems that more than curiosity has drawn Demonai to study humanity. The continuing existence of the entire third dimension may depend on the results of his experiments, and perhaps the fate of his own kind as well.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Marks (the Sic Transit Terra series) moves away from traditional space opera with limited success in this oddity. Police Det. Marty Breck is enjoying a cup of coffee in his Toronto apartment when a pigeon on his window ledge explodes, leading him to fear a sniper is gunning for him. It's not the first time he's called in a strange occurrence, and no one takes him seriously. But that incident is followed by a second spontaneous bird explosion in a nearby park, and a detonation in a research facility. There, lab assistant Ellie O'Toole witnesses a lab rat swell up in size before combusting. Later, O'Toole sees what looks like a ghost in a washing machine at a Laundromat and calls the authorities. Breck's assigned to investigate, and the two compare notes of their baffling experiences. Soon after, Marks pulls back the curtain to reveal that a being named Demonai is responsible for all the phenomena, and the narrative flashes back to 2003 to illustrate Demonai's earlier efforts to "tease threads" of three humans' essences "into the fifth dimension." Marks doesn't make suspending disbelief easy; the bizarre plot won't grab many readers, and the prose and characterizations aren't solid enough to compensate. This is one to skip.