Alpha and Omega
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3.4 • 7 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
New York Times bestselling author Harry Turtledove reveals a new side of his potent imagination in a gripping speculative novel about the End of Days—and a discovery in the Middle East that turns the world upside down.
What would happen if the ancient prophecy of the End of Days came true? It is certainly the last thing Eric Katz, a secular archaeologist from Los Angeles, expects during what should be a routine dig in Jerusalem. But perhaps higher forces have something else in mind when a sign presaging the rising of the Third Temple is located in America, a dirty bomb is detonated in downtown Tel Aviv, and events conspire to place a team of archaeologists in the tunnels deep under the Temple Mount. There, Eric is witness to a discovery of such monumental proportions that nothing will ever be the same again.
Harry Turtledove is the master at portraying ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events, and what is more extraordinary than the incontrovertible proof that there truly is a higher force controlling human destiny? But as to what that force desires . . . well, that is the question.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bestseller Turtledove (Through Darkest Europe) doesn't bring his A-game to this over-the-top religious thriller. A "red heifer, the first in 2,000 years," whose ashes could be used to make people ritually pure, is found in Arkansas and transported to Israel by Yitzhak Avigad, a fundamentalist Jew. A dirty bomb detonated by Muslim terrorists in the Tel Aviv bus station leads the Israeli religious authorities to remove restrictions from a team of archeologists digging under the Temple Mount, whose tunneling reveals the Ark of the Covenant itself, magically floating off the ground. An American journalist drops dead after touching it. The amazing find fits in with Avigad's plan to rebuild the Third Temple, which would house the Ark, after the sacrifice of the red heifer to purify everything. This plan to displace the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque naturally raises tensions with the Arab world. Turtledove doesn't sweat the details, and his prose may elicit some unintended guffaws ("God still packed a punch and He probably hadn't got fat sitting on the sidelines the past 3,000 years"). Turtledove fans will hope for better next time.
