Carnival of Destruction - Hardcover

Stableford, Brian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0786701226 ISBN 13: 9780786701223

Publisher: Running Press, 1994

Synopsis

In the climax to the acclaimed trilogy, Lydyard undertakes an adventure that involves his arch-rival, the werewolves of London, and a young French soldier, and finally reveals the nature and purpose of the angels. By the author of The Werewolves of London.

About this title

Reviews

God is dead and the universe is breaking down in this climactic entry in Stableford's dark fantasy trilogy, which began with The Werewolves of London and continued with The Angel of Pain. Still alive are seven fallen angels who are fearful about what to do with the rest of their existences. To determine their futures, they pit their energies against each other in the likenesses of men at war. The story, which is as much a demonology as a novel, begins with Anatole, a French atheist wounded in France during WWI who finds himself tortured by agents of Satan, saved by Jeanne d'Arc and given a message he must carry to arthritic David Lydyard, retired English metascientist-and protagonist of the two prequels-who now thinks he's Satan. Stableford attempts a kind of Gray's Anatomy of the sensibilities of God-less angels as they try to grasp their own beginnings and shape their futures. With its cast of angels and world-wandering werewolves and a plot that considers space and matter, the death of Earth and a last chance for humanity, this richly inventive, sometimes achingly dense novel assures Stableford's place in the front lines of speculative fiction.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

As World War I ravages Europe, a young French soldier returns from the brink of death as the instrument of an otherworldly force that leads him to England. There he confronts a small group of people privy to the secret history of the world. The conclusion of this trilogy, which includes The Werewolves of London (LJ 11/15/92) and The Angel of Pain (Carroll & Graf, 1993), becomes a voyage through time and space as well as a journey into the consciousness of the universe. Fans of speculative fiction will enjoy this ambitious and imaginative novel.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The conclusion to the dark fantasy trilogy Stableford began with The Werewolves of London (1992) and continued with The Angel of Pain is set in 1918, the climax of World War I. David Lydyard is again sent off on another adventure on behalf of the mysterious, otherworldly but not standard-issue angels. He is again involved with archrival Jacob Harkender and London's surviving werewolves (affected, like everyone else, by the war), and he encounters a French soldier mortally wounded in the trenches and translated at the last moment to the angels' sphere of existence. As literate and meticulously done as its predecessors, Stableford's latest is particularly notable for its First World War setting, one that seems an obvious candidate for a horror milieu yet also seems to have been previously largely overlooked. Roland Green

Edition details

• Publisher: Running Press
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0786701226
• ISBN 13: 9780786701223
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 433