From Publishers Weekly
One horseman shy of a full apocalypse, Grant's Millennium Quartet strides majestically through its third installment. Following the pattern established in Symphony and In the Mood, Grant foregrounds a tale of personal supernatural experience against a broad backdrop pregnant with portents of biblical doom?this time, plague. Trey Falkirk is a reluctant gambler with a magic touch that can coax money from slot machines. He has never thought much about his uncommon luck, his extraordinary ability to survive serious injury or his ability to elude the smallpox epidemic that is devastating all of America but for Las Vegas, his current home. Then Trey meets the enigmatic Sir John Harp, an aristocratic elder who awakens him to his wild talents and inevitable destiny (which will include characters from the first two novels). Hovering on the fringes of Trey's life are an evangelical gospel singer, a pair of spunky preteen girls and an assortment of emotionally and physically crippled neighbors, any of whom might be allied with the evil influence that tries to manipulate Trey's good fortune for ill. As is often the case in Grant's work, there are a number of mysteries that the author neglects to resolve completely, but the mythic aspects of Trey's adventures?his noble benefactor, his engagement with the Vegas Casino strip that he dubs "the dragon" and so on?give this tale vital coherence and power. Notwithstanding an overwrought finale, this novel bests its predecessors and sets a dramatic stage for the resolution of a provocative dark fantasy series.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
In the fourth novel in Grant's Millennium quartet, the Horseman bearing down on humankind is plague. Although Grant employs many of the same motifs that Stephen King used in
The Stand (1978), he spins them in an original and delightfully macabre manner. Trey Falkirk lives in an all-but-abandoned subdivision outside Las Vegas with a small group of outcast neighbors. This area of the desert is notable for two things: it alone has escaped the ravages of a mutant strain of smallpox, and Falkirk, living inside its limits, cannot be killed. He lives a reclusive life until Eula, an old psalm-singing choralist, and Sir John Harp, a mysterious Englishman who has tracked Falkirk from the far side of the planet, invade his little community. At least one of the two intends to stop Falkirk before he can discover his destiny outside Las Vegas--but which?
Eric Robbins
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
