Series: Book 1 in the Novels series
Rating: Not rated
Tags: EN-Urban, Lang:en
Summary
December 21, 2012, may be one of the
most watched dates in history. Every 26,000 years, earth
lines up with the exact center of our galaxy. At 11:11 on
December 21, 2012, this event happens again, and the ancient
Maya calculated that it would mark the end, not only of this
age, but of human consciousness as we know it. But what will
actually happen? The end of the world? A new age for mankind?
Nothing? The last time this happened, Cro-Magnon man suddenly
began creating great art in the caves of southern France,
which to this day remains one of the most inexplicable
changes in human history. Now Whitley Strieber explores 2012
in a towering work of fiction that will astound readers with
its truly new insights and a riveting roller-coaster ride of
a story. A mysterious alien presence unexpectedly bursts out
of sacred sites all over the world and begins to rip human
souls from their bodies, plunging the world into chaos it has
never before known. Courage meets cowardice, loyalty meets
betrayal as an entire world struggles to survive this
incredible end-all war. Heroes emerge, villains reveal
themselves, and in the end something completely new and
unexpected happens that at once lifts the fictional
characters into a new life, and sounds a haunting real-world
warning for the future. Strieber's epic sequel to 2006's
The Grays blends equal parts science fiction
thriller, supernatural horror and provocative spiritual
speculation. As struggling author Wylie Dale works on his
latest novel, which revolves around an upcoming date when the
earth crosses both the galactic equator and the solar
ecliptic—a time that the Maya predicted would mark the
cataclysmic end of this age—he begins to uncover
evidence that what he's writing about is actually happening
on a parallel earth. If nothing is done, on December 21,
2012, gateways will open into this world and reptilian
invaders will not only enslave humanity but feast on their
succulent souls as well. While Strieber's exploration into
the existence and import of the soul isn't exactly profound,
it is wildly entertaining. Fans of apocalyptic page-turners
like King's
The Stand and Niven and Pournelle's
Lucifer's Hammer will enjoy this ambitious—and
audacious—tale as it invokes everything from rectal
probes and Ann Coulter to the destruction of the Great
Pyramid of Giza._ (Sept.)_
Archaeologist Martin Winters gets out of the collapsing
Great Pyramid of Khufu just in time to see a gigantic lens
arise from the rubble. Simultaneously at equally ancient
monument sites all over the world, other lenses emerge.
What's happening is a kind of alien invasion, but the aliens,
whose advance agents have been subverting human society for
some time, aren't really another species. They're their
world's degenerates, whose earlier incursions into human
history inspired the way the evil beings of religious
mythology have been represented. In short, they're demons,
fortunately killable but possessed of awesome power by the
standards of Martin's world, which is one of three parallel
Earths. The others are the invaders' and ours, in which buff
sf writer Wiley Dale is compulsively and automatically
writing Martin's story, which is more transmission than
story. Eventually the demonic aliens pop up in Wiley's as
well as Martin's Kansas homeland. Each Earth has advantages
over the others; one of those, in both Martin's and the
aliens' worlds, is that the physical existence of the soul
has been discovered. The implications of that discovery drive
the action of Strieber's hyperactive cosmological thriller.
Despite Wiley and his cop buddy's excruciating
hardy-har-he-man palaver and the exposition turning to
cardboard whenever love is mentioned, it's immensely
entertaining, and it's optioned for a big, splashy, FX-laden
movie. Oh boy! Olson, RayFrom Publishers Weekly
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