Janet has fallen.
Afterglow will take her place.
This is a relentless
novel. We drop right into the story from the first sentence, and are never
released from it. Afterglow has scars, both outside and inside, too numerous to
count. She does feel like ashes, or at least dust blowing in the wind. There is
nothing soft in her existence anymore. Everything has turned hard, like a
blade.
She does exist, in a
way, is still breathing, moving, fighting, killing, reacting to stimuli,
reaching for everything eluding her. She imagines it is there, somewhere ahead,
a mirage on a desert road, forever in her sight, never in her reach.
This is an inspired
and very different story about a lone and lonely woman searching for something
she might never find, a human being not even aware that she is searching for a
quality missing from her life. She wanders aimlessly through streets she doesn’t
recognize, defending herself against any threat that might come her way, not
knowing why, why she keeps rising every time she is struck down. She scares
people. Everyone is scared shitless of her…
Her world, her realm
is very similar to our own, with a few crucial differences.
The story grabs us,
and holds on, making us follow Afterglow through dark alleys and backyards, and
beyond the veil of the material world. She knows something is coming for her,
and so do we. There are forces out there that can even give a mighty sorcerer
like Afterglow pause. The story begins with a bang, and works itself up from
there.
There is the same,
vibrant storytelling as there is in most of Keppler’s writing.
