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An old man rides a workhorse through the night, across mudslides, past stores abandoned for decades, past the rotted corpses of automobiles invisible under mounds of blackberry. Rain courses from his rabbit skin poncho. He carries a sword and a spear. He knows where to find the murderer. He will face him alone.
"Since Tomorrow" is a novel of a world in the remaking. The old man, Frost, remembers the "good times". Those who live on his "farm" among collapsed warehouses and the foundations of vanished houses struggle to maintain human values. But when others in this makeshift world are driven only by greed and the need for power, all values must ultimately be replaced by the simple instinct for survival.
In this full-length novel Morgan Nyberg takes the reader to the West Coast of Canada, where the city of Vancouver has been transformed by climate change, pandemic, economic collapse and earthquake into "Town", a squalid, lawless place inhabited the desperate, the diseased and the dying. Taking advantage of this state of affairs is the formidable Langley, who grows poppies to produce "skag", a crude form of opium. Langley has amassed enough power to control a small private army. And now he is determined to acquire Frost's farm for himself. Recklessly opposing Langley is Frost's fearless but impulsive granddaughter, Noor.
Like Russell Hoban's "Riddley Walker" or Cormac McCarthy's "The Road", "Since Tomorrow" demonstrates that there is room in the post-apocalyptic genre for the highest quality writing. Morgan Nyberg tells nothing - he shows everything. In clear, sensuous prose free of commentary or explanation - prose as addictive as Langley's skag - he leads the reader toward that climactic night with Frost on his horse, and farther, to the threshold of a new, perhaps happier, era.
In the comic literary tradition of Vladimir Nabokov, Anthony Burgess and Mordecai Richler, author Morgan Nyberg plunges irreverently into the domain of "The DaVinci Code". A secret society, international conspiracies, high-level corruption, a ruthless Church - it's all here, along with the agonizing choices faced by an unhappy man who wants only peace of mind.
Gabor Esterhazy is Mr. MILLENNIUM, a bright, young but troubled manual laborer who is taken under the very shady wing of a secret society. Their claim: that he is descended from Jesus Christ. Surely the resulting fame, power, money and adulation will bring him the peace he needs? Or will he find, too late, that he is merely a puppet, placed on a false throne to satisfy the insidious aims of those who claim to care for him?
After the "accidental" death of his best friend at the factory where he works, Gabor's scheming, ambitious mother arranges for him to travel to Portugal, where he was born. On the way - again "accidentally" - he meets Louis Bonhomme d’Anjou, head of The Sanctuary of The Blood. Believing that he may have finally found the road to happiness, depressive Gabor accepts d'Anjou's claim that he is "The Descendant". Instantly Gabor finds himself in possession of money, power, fame, a made-to-order lover. In short, he has a new life. The only problem is that it is a life defined by moral compromise.
Meet the other larger-than-life characters that accompany Gabor on his sad and funny journey: his heroically tough but loving stepfather, the opportunistic father he meets for the first time in Portugal, his amoral but beautiful "publicity powerhouse", his questionable bodyguards, the woman who pretends to love him, the woman who really does. Participate in Gabor's disgraceful but colorful behaviour - the parties! the women! - as his expectations are replaced by cynicism. Follow Gabor Esterhazy as he goes determinedly off the rails, and his journey toward peace of mind becomes a dark and comic shambles of lust, deceit and mortal danger.
"In this warm and graceful story, the author achieves an artful blend of the mythological and the earthly."
From the citation for the Governor General's Literary Awards (Canada)
Young Galahad lives in the South American jungle, where he plays with snakes and crocodiles. His parents are adventurers and Nobel Prize-winning authors. But when they fail to return from an expedition in their hot-air balloon Galahad must leave the jungle to live with his grandfather in a North American slum. In this alien and fascinating world he encounters both evil and magic.
Join Galahad and the other main characters - his street-musician grandfather; blind and wheelchair-bound Wheels; Slim, who owns a tattoo parlour - as they confront the power-hungry exterminator, Creetch, who has invented a spray that makes people disappear. Boo the city's mayor, who would rather juggle on television than face the threat of Creetch. Cheer for the unlikely army of cockroaches, flies and pigeons who fight for our hero in his darkest hour.
It is a time of strange “plagues”. Glitterville, where the Bugg family resides, completely disappears, consumed in a Plague of Daytime Darkness. The family’s old butler, Bentley D. Kreppit, and the 2 children, acrobatic Athena and brainy Odysseus, along with Odysseus’ pet rat, Defoe, narrowly escape. They travel from town to town, hoping to find the children’s parents. To earn money they put on shows featuring the acrobatic skills of Athena.
Bentley keeps a journal as they travel, relating one particular adventure: the making of the film "Bad Day in Gladland" by Prodigious Productions. At Prodigious Productions they learn of other plagues, such as the Plague of Getting Lost, the Plague of Anti-Gravity and the Plague of Flying Fish. Events turn dangerous (and hilarious) when the greedy director of the film company, J. Metropolitan Nash, and his scheming assistant, Perfidia, become convinced that one of the actors knows a recipe for creating gold. It is up to Bentley, Odysseus, Athena and Defoe to save the day.
"Bad Day in Gladland", like the books of "A Series of Unfortunate Events", stands out among the predictable offerings in the Young Adult genre, both for its originality and its infectious vitality. Parents will enjoy the story at least as much as their children.
