The Second Coming (The Millennium Series) - Hardcover

A former paratrooper and research ecologist, John Dalmas began his writing career by selling his first novel, The Yngling, to the legendary editor of Analog, John W. Campbell. Dalmas is known for his masterful combination of action-adventure with the theme of the mystic warrior. In addition to The Regiment and its sequels, his many novels for Baen include The Lion of Farside and its sequels, The Lizard War and its recent sequel The Helverti Invasion, and such non-series novels as Soldiers and The Second Coming.

At the end of this preachy near-future tale of a black messiah, the first of a new series, SF veteran Dalmas (The Lizard War) acknowledges that he drew his hero's teachings from Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's four "Michael books," the Bible and thinkers ranging from Jacques Barzun to Paramhansa Yogananda. A blend of Eastern and Western prophets, Ngunda Elija Aran can heal others and levitate himself while offering love, rebirth and redemption in a violent, economically depressed America, where at least race and gender appear no longer to be issues (the U.S. president is a black woman). Many fear that Aran's Millennium movement is merely another cult out to make money and converts, and much of the overwrought narrative concerns his enemies' efforts to assassinate him. Insisting he's not Christ reborn, Aran predicts the imminent arrival of a vague "Infinite Soul" to coincide with a natural disasterâ€"an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. Fans of apocalyptic fiction who can overlook the often clumsy, plodding prose will be in heaven. The icky jacket art, depicting a black man caught in the cross-hairs of a gun sight against an American flag backdrop, says it all.
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