cover image The Savior’s Game

The Savior’s Game

Sean Chercover. Thomas & Mercer, $24.95 (284p) ISBN 978-1-4778-4879-1

In Thriller Award–finalist Chercover’s uneven conclusion to his Game trilogy (after 2015’s The Devil’s Game), former Vatican priest Daniel Byrne evades assassins while learning to harness anomalous information transfer (AIT), a disorder that allows people to predict the future. AIT pulls Byrne into an alternate reality led by a mysterious and dangerous messiah called Noah, who may or may not have a counterpart in the real world. Byrne treks around the globe (from Barbados to New York to Barcelona) as he slips between realities and encounters characters from the series’s two previous novels. Readers of those books may appreciate seeing some loose ends tied up. An early section where Byrne finds a guide to explain the AIT phenomenon and lead him through the alternate reality helps ground the plot, but this section ends too soon. Unfortunately for new readers, the frenetic pace and muddy character development make investing in the story or its final outcome challenging. [em]Agent: Dan Conaway, Writers House. (Aug.) [/em]