PhilPaine.com

This is Jon George’s sec­ond nov­el, which I read eager­ly after being very pleased by Faces of Mist and Flame. This one is much more com­pli­cated, jug­gling sev­eral char­ac­ters and sit­u­a­tions. The plot involves a sud­den alter­ation in the fab­ric of real­ity, expe­ri­enced by the whole earth, a char­ac­ter try­ing to pin down the nature of psy­chic abil­i­ties, and char­ac­ters flash­ing on events in the past. Among those events is the assas­si­na­tion of SS–Ober­grup­pen­führer Rein­hard Hey­drich, who was per­haps the prin­ci­pal archi­tect of the Holo­caust. This fas­ci­nated me. I not only made a study of the Wansee Con­fer­ence, where Hey­drich con­sol­i­dated his plans, but a friend showed me the exact spot in the Prague sub­urb of Kobylisy where he was shot by Czech par­ti­sans. I will rec­om­mend this nov­el, espe­cially to any­one who has already read Faces of Mist and Flame, with the caveat that its nar­ra­tive com­plex­ity requires more atten­tive reading.