Armageddon, Texas
Book 3 of The Messiah Trilogy
- 2014 INDIES Finalist
- Finalist, Fantasy (Adult Fiction)
The stories of Beowulf and Genesis are played out across a postapocalyptic Texas in a book that is not only witty and exciting but wickedly smart to boot. Thirty years ago, the world ended—most of humanity is gone, half of the American South is under water, and the other half is turned to unforgiving desert. No one under the age of fifty is left, except for a boy and a girl who are maybe aliens, don’t have belly buttons, and can talk to animals. Oh yeah, and there’s a dragon. And a monster and his mother. If the story is starting to sound familiar, it’s guaranteed you’ve never read it like this.
Tommy Zurhellen is a master craftsman. Each chapter is written from a different character’s perspective, and he captures each voice perfectly, from Eve’s disdain for paragraphs to Adam’s insistence that “accordion” means “according” to Dog’s direct discourse with the reader. Eve is recast as the smarter and braver of the pair, a feminist who will have none of these old-world gender constructs, thank you very much. Allusions are made to everything from classical Greek mythology to Breaking Bad. And when it’s least expected, Zurhellen packs a wallop of a punch with a breathtaking image: “In the beginning, everything was poetry. Before God invented water or air or amoebas or even sunlight, there was poetry.”
Reviewed by
Allyce Amidon
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
