Customer Reviews

Archangel

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In Conner's alternate universe it's the 1920s and the world's people -except for those of African descent - are dying of a blood disease called Hun. Little is know about Hun except that it started in Germany, when a germ warfare experiment got out of hand. The disease ended the Great War and 12 years later it's still coming in waves, striking those who had thought themselves immune. No one knows how it's spread.

Minneapolis photographer Danny Constantine, drafted into being a reporter because so few are left, stumbles upon a vampire-like murder and discovers from a gruff black sergeant that it's not the first. But his editor won't print the story - people are sick of news about death. Investigating on his own Constantine learns that black people have been disappearing from the city streets by the hundreds. And, in an environment of fear and repression, a pirate radio broadcaster, calling herself the Archangel, is the only one who protests the status-quo.

Meanwhile a renowned physician specializing in Hun research has come to town. Interviewing him, Constantine meets an intriguing heiress who works among the poor and volunteers at Gray's hospital. Is she the girl of his dreams or his nightmares? Has Gray come to save the city or complete its destruction?

Conner's Minneapolis is rife with prejudice, fear, hypocrisy, and political intrigue. Although the plot delivers no major surprises, Conner keeps all his balls in the air successfully, offering mystery, romance, a detailed and absorbing world view and a convincing, sympathetic hero. This well-written hard cover debut is a fine read.

Not sure of what to expect, I picked up this book at the local library and was quickly hooked. The story is good, there are lots of interesting characters, and it finishes with a nice climax. One thing I really enjoyed about the book was the way Mr. Conner described the time period, using slang and descriptions of the clothes, cars and scenery. Even though I was born in 1966, it generated a huge sense of nostalgia for me making me wish things weren't quite so complicated as is today's world (especially regarding baseball!) Overall, a well thought out and interesting book!

_Archangel_ by Mike Conner is a difficult novel to pigeonhole. It is a novel of alternate history. It is a period piece. It is a mystery novel. And it is a novel about the end of the world.

The time, the summer of 1930. The place, Milltown, Minnesota. Danny Constantine, a photographer for the local paper (forced to turn into a reporter as well thanks to increasing staff vacancies) accidentally uncovers a murder. The victim is a white man sucked dry of all his blood, left pale and drained on railroad tracks as if he was fed upon by a vampire. Constantine takes a homicide detective (Sergeant Dooley Willson) and his partner to the crime scene, the two police officers revealing to Constantine that this is the third body like this that they have found. Constantine also finds out that the editor of his paper does not want to run with this story, forbidding Constantine from writing about it and stating that the public does not want more bad news, particularly since people were starting to die again from disease.

During the closing days of the First World War, German scientists experimented on Ebola and created a deadly biological weapon. Released to deadly effect at the end of the war, it proved lethal enough, but the real horror began in the spring of 1919 when a mutated form of the virus dubbed the Hun emerged in Europe, quickly spreading worldwide and killing 90 million people. Spreading throughout the world and hitting the same communities again and again in waves, decimating people who had survived previous onslaughts, many millions died in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Australia. The United States went from a nation of 125 million people in 1912 to only 35 million in 1930.

Hun took two forms. Acute Hun was sudden and violent; once it hit its victims were beyond all help and died in a day or less, generally within hours, many times within minutes, perishing from massive spontaneous hemorrhaging (bleeding to death) and near complete organ failure. Chronic Hun was in many ways similar to hemophilia; the victim had little or no ability to form blood clots and could die from cuts or other wounds; the only way to save them in many cases when injured was a fresh blood transfer from an uninfected or immune donor. While men could live for years, even decades perhaps, if they took care and had access to medical care, women were doomed to die during their first menstruation once infected.

One group however was immune; those with black African blood. Though they might get a mild illness from the Hun, no black person died, whether they were black African from Africa, a Creole in the Caribbean, or African-American, as they were all basically immune. This fact produced a wide range of emotions, from fear on the part of many white people left alive, believing erroneously that either blacks created the virus and spread the disease and/or they were eagerly waiting in the wings to destroy "white man's civilization;" to hatred, some whites resenting blacks for not suffering from Hun, this feeling being exacerbated by existing racial tensions in a pre-desegregated America; to hope, with many other whites believing African-Americans could be induced to move into dying towns to fill vacant jobs, run railroads and factories, reopen stores and restaurants, grow crops, police the streets, and fill in for the all deceased plague victims.

This complex mélange of feelings - fear, hatred, hope - very much affected the protagonists in the novel, both black and white. Some were deeply conflicted, like my favorite character, Dooley Willson. An African-American, he had experienced racism firsthand growing up and had no use for white people much of his life, yet as Hun decimated the ranks of the Milltown police force, he steady rose in the ranks of what had once been an all white force. With a chance to oppress the whites of the town (who were becoming more and more a minority), tempted by the likes of Theo Rostek, a black gangster, a man who outwardly to whites was smooth, suave, debonair, and very helpful, privately could not wait for the whites to all die off, Rostek eager to get Willson on his payroll, urging him to stop enforcing "white man's law," Willson was still an honest cop. Perhaps clinging more and more to the law in an increasingly uncertain world, he found himself one of the few people actively preserving a world he once hated.

Unfortunately, the law was mattering less and less to various players in Milltown, ranging from Rostek to the Ku Klux Klan to the Greater Northwest Development Company, an organization of black and white businessmen and politicians who sought to manage the chaos, bring in African-American settlers, and get the town and region running again. Very few -such as Willson and Constantine - played by the old rules, as these new players were not above using murder to achieve their goals (or to look the other way if it occurred). Even Dr. Simon Gray, a doctor who moved to Milltown and set up a research facility to treat Hun victims and find a cure, was not above it seems using sinister methods or having shadowy goals.

While the setting and some the characters were wonderful, the weakest part of the novel was the mystery itself. I had the main part of it figured out pretty early on in the book, mainly because the author gave out too many clues I thought (though parts of it did remain a surprise until the end). Though Conner did cite some sources at the end of the book, I did wonder about the plausibility of some elements, namely whether or not medical knowledge should be that advanced in 1930 (though I imagine it possible that a worldwide plague would tend to focus the minds of researchers) and if the disease should operate the way it was depicted (but then I am no expert).

"Archangel" is a surprising good alternate history thriller. The novel takes a little bit of history, a little bit of hypochondria, a dash of rascism, the ever popular vampire and stews them together.

Conner hypothesizes the release of a pneumatic ebola virus by the German High Command at the end of WWI. The ensuing epidemic follows the course of the Great Flu Epidemic which acutally followed the war. The Flu killed millions. However, this bio-war Hemoragic Fever kills hundreds of millions. If effects all strata of society, except for those of African descent. As successive waves of the plague roll across the world like the black plague did in the middle ages, society warps and in places crumbles as the existing white dominated civilization becomes extinct.

Set against this background in a dying American heartland city is a Vampire-like murderer being pursued by a white newspaper reporter working for a dying newspaper and a black detective.

I liked Archangel. The characters were a little cliche'd. However, Conners science and history were excellent. The background was so rich, and credible "the characters I've seen so many times before" eased me through the novel. The author even surprised me with the obligatory twist at the end.

What didn't I like? Conner needs a better editor. There were several errors in his grammer, and I don't mean the quoted Ebonics passages. In addition, for a first novel, he was too ambitious. He created too many characters with too many changes in points of view.

In the middle of a spate of alternate history thrillers set in 1900's this is a good one. Recommended.

This is the first book in years that has been able to keep me up all night. The characters are real, well-rounded, and fully developed. The situations are entirely believably in this fantastic tale of terror and sickness.

Watch out for mounds of foul language though. The racist remarks I can excuse because of the era and that is truly how it was, but others exist simply to be there and it does get a little tiring after a while.

Altogether, this was a most excellent read and I highly recommend it for anyone searching for something not cliche.

(And the two reviews after this one are obviously mistakes on the wrong book. You can ignore what they say because someone was obviously stupid.)

"Archangel" is a solidly written alternate history/detective story, in a setting that will surprise you. Most alternate history that I've read (although I myself am not a big fan) is set at some momentous point of "real" history, usually some military event like the Civil War or D-Day or the siege of Byzantium, and reimagines it with some big "what-if" to see who might then have won and how they would have changed the world.

"Archangel," on the other hand, is more about what people might do if history had unfolded slightly differently. Conner's setting is a small industrial city in Minnesota in the 1930s; his premise is that a Nazi-engineered super-virus (a virulent form of hemorrhagic fever --- sort of a super-Ebola) was released during WWI and decimated the population of America. The hook is that anyone of African descent is immune. Thus Conner's book, which takes place in the early 1930s, is strongest when it explores what it means, in segregated America, that black people are the only healthy workforce --- are, ultimately, inheriting the positions of power and wealth from which they had until recently been excluded. Connor is at his most interesting as he delves into how his characters, white and black, prejudiced and not, angry and bitter and resigned, feel about how their world is changing. The action revolves around a series of disturbing, vampire-like murders and draws a mysterious radio broadcaster, a newspaper reporter, and a police investigator deeper into the hidden exchanges of power that make up their changing city.

It's a good book, well crafted and interestingly imagined. Conner won the Nebula Award in 1991 for a novelette, although he doesn't seem to have published a lot. "Archangel" doesn't quite live up to the comparison to "The Alienist" that appears on the cover of my 1995 edition of the paperback, but it's well worth reading. If you should come across a copy in the library or used-book store, pick it up.