Quest for Apollo

HIS NAME WAS VIRGIL ...

I met him in the woods when I was fleeing from a wolf. He looked around fifty, but said he'd been that age for about 2,000 years --- ever since he'd died. And that was part of his story that didn't sound too crazy.

When I told him that I was a writer and my name was Delbert Frederick Alderini, the guy just about flipped out, said I was the one he'd been waiting for, that I had to come with him to see Diana --- the goddess Diana. Of course, I didn't believe him, but it seemed like there might be a story in it so I went.

Diana was a goddess, alright, a real beauty. She was working as a waitress in a restaurant in Italy's Aventine hills, and when she gave me her pitch, how could I resist? She said her brother Apollo had been condemned for helping humans too much. His punishment was to be reincarnated over and over again as a doomed hero with no memory of his true identity. But this time around was different. If Virgil and I couldn't find Apollo within the next six days and free him from this cycle not only Apollo but everyone would go up in a total nuclear conflagration. So what else could I do but try to save the world?

A chance meeting in the Tuscany woods with an old man claiming to be the poet Virgil launches a young American tourist on a desperate quest through the past for the trapped spirit of Apollo in order to prevent the world's imminent destruction. First novelist Lahey's attention to historic detail and his easy humor make this otherwise predictable fantasy a worthwhile purchase for large fantasy collections.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.