Tags
Alan S. Kessler, alternate history, angels, dark fantasy, fallen angels, fantasy, futuristic fantasy, Goddess Fish Productions, Ha-Satan, paranormal, religious dogma, Satan, the apocrypha, the Bible, the Devil
This novel immediately captivated my imagination. I seriously wanted to review A Satan Carol, but life got in the way. However, I do intend to take it on my trip in January, and I can’t wait to delve beneath the skin of the protagonist. The whole premise of this book is fresh and intriguing. And now, A Satan Carol…
BLURB:
Nostalgic for the Inquisition and plague, Satan feels neglected by the modern world that no longer cares about heresy or blames him for disease and death. Moving through time from Ireland during the famine year 1848 to Massachusetts, 2028, and a parallel dimension, Satan tries to create a place where people will love him. This requires Katie, age 14, to give her baby’s soul to the devil’s son.
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EXCERPT
On back of the EnViro truck continuing across the grassless, treeless land, Orem couldn’t tell if the gray, steaming waves he saw lapping sluggishly against a beach were those of a bay or ocean. He could distinguish the two structures whose dark shapes he had seen from a distance, the one closest to him an old farmhouse painted black, beyond it, a ramshackle pier standing a half mile from the shoreline. When the truck passed the pier, Orem saw what looked like a junkyard where the road ended. As the truck slowed before entering the junkyard’s fenced in area, he let go of the handle and jumped, rolling in dirt so dry and light he inhaled it as if it were another form of air. Choking, he took small breaths, sat there slowly adapting to the particle laced, heated atmosphere.
Out of the ground hundreds of small, shriveled crabs, their oversized, razor-sharp claws clicking, swarmed over him. Orem thrashed at them, his hands going through their bodies. Still frantically searching for what had strayed into their feeding zone, the crabs covered Orem’s face, twitched and convulsed in hunger and after running down his legs, disappeared with a popping sound into the dust, the last of their energy wasted on trying to eat a ghost. Orem saw no bite marks on his skin. He got up and by walking slowly, resting every few steps, the heat from the scorching land burning through the soles of his shoes, reached the junkyard fence of dry-rotted planks arranged haphazardly. Orem read a blistered, hand-lettered sign propped up against an old toilet: Moe Gut-man Salvge & antiks
A business sign…in Hell? The EnViro road from Boston to the White Mountains ended on Moe Gutman’s desert land where sinks, stained mattresses, broken pipes and large, cracked vats lay jumbled together along the fence. Through a hole in the boards, Orem watched the truck he’d jumped from pierce the ground with its titanium shaft. Sludge poured from the truck into a bubbling landfill marked Field 17. Nearby, a row of glowing, fissured mounds created by EvViro trucks pumping waste beyond the ground’s capacity to absorb it, rose 70 feet above fields 12 and 9. Brother Green’s business extended all the way to Hell. Orem didn’t understand. For him Hell was a place of torment, not entrepreneurship. In the Hell he imagined, the crabs would have chewed on his face forever. “Am I a spirit and this, damnation? The house and pier, the junkyard, designed to remind me of the world I’ve lost?” Except for the heat, he couldn’t feel or touch what was around him. This Hell of Brother Green’s trucks had its own dynamics and he remained outside it, looking in, detached and alone. “Is this my punishment for sin? Eternal isolation even from other damned souls in this land of the dead?”
Hello hello. Can you hear me?
Orem blinked and looked over to where a boy sat slumped and drooling in a stroller parked a few yards from the junkyard fence. Behind the child, a young girl, very thin, stood gazing out at the water.
Children? In Hell? To Orem that didn’t make sense. And he was sure the girl had just sPoken to him. Is it possible, by some miracle, I’m still alive?
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After reading the excerpt, I know you will want to know a bit about the author and how to contact him–not to mention how to buy this new look at a very old character.
Alan Steven Kessler lives in an old New England farmhouse with his wife, four children, and dog, Buckeye. Born in Ohio, he loves Ohio State football.
Buy Link – A Satan Carol