Adventures in Godhood

Marks (the Sic Transit Terra series) moves away from traditional space opera with limited success in this oddity. Police Det. Marty Breck is enjoying a cup of coffee in his Toronto apartment when a pigeon on his window ledge explodes, leading him to fear a sniper is gunning for him. It’s not the first time he’s called in a strange occurrence, and no one takes him seriously. But that incident is followed by a second spontaneous bird explosion in a nearby park, and a detonation in a research facility. There, lab assistant Ellie O’Toole witnesses a lab rat swell up in size before combusting. Later, O’Toole sees what looks like a ghost in a washing machine at a Laundromat and calls the authorities. Breck’s assigned to investigate, and the two compare notes of their baffling experiences. Soon after, Marks pulls back the curtain to reveal that a being named Demonai is responsible for all the phenomena, and the narrative flashes back to 2003 to illustrate Demonai’s earlier efforts to “tease [the] threads” of three humans’ essences “into the fifth dimension.” Marks doesn’t make suspending disbelief easy; the bizarre plot won’t grab many readers, and the prose and characterizations aren’t solid enough to compensate. This is one to skip. (Nov.)