ANGELOPOLIS

Sequel to the best-selling Angelology (2010), wherein a dedicated cadre of Angelologists battle the beautiful yet sadomasochistically evil angel-human hybrids who’ve controlled human affairs since Noah's flood.

In Paris, angel hunter V.A. Verlaine searches for former nun Evangeline, once a normal, wingless, red-blooded human, now somehow metamorphosed into a winged, blue-blooded, angel-powered Nephilim. Evangeline presents Verlaine with a fabulous Fabergé egg before allowing herself to be captured by Eno, the blackhearted, lesser-angel servant of the Grigori family, the most powerful Nephilim. Since Eno will convey Evangeline to the panopticon, the Grigoris’ vast prison/research center in Siberia where she will face torture and experimentation, the egg is an important clue. Where better to research the egg, Verlaine reasons, than the Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg? The egg, it emerges, contains the secret to an elixir that may prove decisive in the struggle against the Nephilim. Another key to the elixir is found in an old album of jottings and pressed flowers left by Rasputin, but some of the plants mentioned in the recipe are now extinct. But wait! Fortunately, Noah didn’t just pack all the animals aboard his ark, he also grabbed plants and seeds! So, while Verlaine climbs aboard the train to Siberia to rescue Evangeline, his colleagues head for the Black Sea, where settlements flourished before Noah’s flood. The plot, of which the foregoing is barely a hint, twisting itself into knots trying, and failing, not to contradict itself, and upon which an ordinary world beyond eggs, floods, documents, battling angels, pressed flowers and what-all barely impinges. Despite the frequent violence, the action consists largely of antagonists whose main objective, seemingly, is not to defeat, kill or seriously inconvenience their opponents. Expect pages and pages of abstruse discussion about Fabergé eggs, Noah, genetics and angelic anatomy.

Even Angelology addicts likely face disappointment. Then again, maybe not.