Prophet : a novel

Select an Action

Prophet : a novel

Title:

Prophet : a novel

Author:

Blaché, Sin, author.

Macdonald, Helen, 1970- author.

Summary:

Adam Rubenstein and Sunil Rao have been reluctant partners since their Uzbekistan days. Adam is a seemingly unflappable American Intelligence officer and Rao is an ex-MI6 agent, an addict and rudderless pleasure hound, with the uncanny ability to discern the truth of things--out everyone and everything other than Adam. When an American diner turns up in a foggy field in the UK after a mysterious death, Adam and Rao are called in to investigate, setting into motion the most dangerous and otherworldly mission of their lives. In a surreal, action-packed quest that takes Adam and Rao from secret laboratories in Colorado, to a luxury lodge in Aspen, to the remote Nevada desert, the pair begins to uncover how and why people’s fondest memories are being weaponized against them by a spooky, ever-shifting substance called Prophet. As the unlikely twosome battles this strange new reality, Prophet’s victims’ memories are materializing in increasingly bizarre forms: favorite games, beloved pets, fairground rides, each more malevolent than the next. Prophet is like no enemy Adam and Rao--or the world--have ever come up against. -- Amazon.

Edition:

First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition.

First edition.

Physical Description:

468 pages ; 24 cm

Genre:

Subject Term:

Intelligence service -- Fiction.

Conspiracies -- Fiction.

Diners (Restaurants) -- Fiction.

Gay men -- Fiction.

Murderers -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

Colorado -- Fiction.

England -- Fiction.

Nevada -- Fiction.

Author(s):

Macdonald, Helen, 1970-

Publisher:

Grove Press,

Publication Date:

2023

ISBN:

9780802162021

Publication Information:

New York : Grove Press, [2023]

Call Number:

BLACHE

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607003668194	New Adult Fiction	BLACHE Sin	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

From the extraordinary minds of award-winning and New York Times -bestselling author of H Is for Hawk Helen Macdonald and first time author Sin Blaché, Prophet is their electric debut, a tantalizing adventure fusing noir, sci-fi and a slow burn queer romance--set in a universe just one perilous step from our own.

In a surreal, action-packed quest that takes Adam and Rao from secret laboratories in Colorado, to a luxury lodge in Aspen, to the remote Nevada desert, the pair begins to uncover how and why people's fondest memories are being weaponized against them by a spooky, ever-shifting substance called Prophet. As the unlikely twosome battles this strange new reality, Prophet's victims' memories are materializing in increasingly bizarre forms: favorite games, beloved pets, fairground rides, each more malevolent than the next. Prophet is like no enemy Adam and Rao - or the world - have ever come up against.

A tension-shot odd-couple romance, an unflinching send-up of corporate corruption, and a genre-bending tour de force, Prophet is a triumph of storytelling by a new writing duo with a thrilling future.

Author Notes

Helen Macdonald is an English writer, naturalist and academic at the University of Cambridge. She is the author of H is for Hawk, which won the Samuel Johnson prize. This book is a depiction of the grief and depression she fell into after the sudden death of her father in 2007 and how she bounced back through falconry. H is for Hawk, which has just won the £20,000 prize, describes the year Macdonald spent training a goshawk. She writes about subsuming her grief in the relationship with the bird and trying to be like her: solitary, self-possessed, free from grief, and numb to the hurts of human life. Her book is the first memoir to win the prize. She will be at the WORD Christchurch Writers & Readers Festival in 2015.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

A drug designed by the military weaponizes people's nostalgia in this sinuous and transfixing collaboration from Macdonald (H Is for Hawk) and Blaché. After an American roadside diner magically appears outside of a U.S. air base in England, the two operatives dispatched to investigate--former MI6 agent Sunil Rao and American intelligence officer Adam Rubenstein--trace its likely origins to Lunastus-Dainsleif, a lab in Aurora, Colo., that runs the military-funded Eos Prophet program. Prophet is a wildly unpredictable pharmacologic agent that induces material approximations of fond memories--referred to as Eos Prophet Generated Objects, or EPGOs--but at a grievous cost for the user: a psychic break, and sometimes death. Rao and Rubenstein prove immune to the side effects, which makes them the perfect agents to study the drug. The novel's denouement, in which Rao, Rubenstein, and their ops team navigate a landscape booby-trapped with rogue EPGOs to rescue Lunastus's CEO, is wildly surreal with occasional flashes of dark humor, such as a Pac-Man machine that physically consumes a man who was once addicted to the game. The authors' most irresistible achievement, though, is their odd-couple pairing of the Dionysian Rao with the fastidious Rubenstein, who bicker and banter contentiously despite their fondness for each other. The well-matched authors make good on their audacious premise. (Aug.)

Library Journal Review

DEBUT People are being put into a trance-like state while holding a beloved object, after being injected with a mysterious substance called Prophet. Attempting to separate person and object leads to death, and these nostalgic objects are starting to manifest away from their holders. Former MI6 agent Sunil Rao and his handler Lieutenant Colonel Adam Rubenstein find that they are the only people whom Prophet doesn't affect. When the nostalgic manifestations become hostile, only Rao and Rubenstein have what it takes to save the world, if only they can work through their own issues first. Unlike many sci-fi titles, the focus of the book revolves around the two main characters rather than on action sequences or futuristic technologies. This allows for plenty of mystery and drama as the story shifts between the present and the past, intertwining the two men and a substance that is making time essentially irrelevant. VERDICT Macdonald (H Is for Hawk) and Blaché's fiction debut is a low-key sci-fi mystery that blends the genres into a fusion of something new. With a hard-to-pin-down genre, the novel will appeal to a wide variety of readers.--Laura Hiatt