35 years from now America is fractured and a shadow of the nation we live in. The old Confederate states are once again a separate country but the reason for the civil war isn’t some return to white power. Instead author Robert Ferrigno has posited a terrible terrorist event on May 19, 2015: New York City and Washington, DC, are destroyed by nuclear bombs while Mecca barely survives a third device and radical Israelis are quickly implicated in the Zionist Betrayal. In the aftermath the other states convert en masse to Islam and the most of the people who don’t flee to the Bible Belt or remain as a persecuted minority.
Prayers for the Assassin is a taut thriller where the players behind that black day and the current powers meet up to decide whether the world–outside of China, for now at least–will become completely Islamic, a true Caliphate as one of the principles puts it. The Jews? Well, Israel went down the tubes as soon as America and the EU withdrew support and, other than stragglers hiding where they can, there don’t seem to be too many left outside a colony in Russia and an enclave on Tasmania. The Islamic States of America even has its own religious police, the Black Robes, who walk around whipping insufficiently pius folks.
The suspense surrounds the whereabouts of a young scholar, the niece and ward of the man who runs State Security. More scandalous than her first book, Sarah’s current research is dangerous enough to put all the major players on her tail when she disappears after class one day. Redbeard asks his adopted but disowned son, the girl’s lover, to find her before the others. Turns out that’s not quite enough but, in the end, Rakkim’s Fedayeen (special forces) training and innate intelligence can save the day.
Ferrigno has taken a pretty big bite with Prayers. Although perhaps not quite in the class of Fatherland, a book the publisher ranks it with, I think this took a mighty big pair of cojones in the post-9/11 world to write and publish. LAX, for instance, has been renamed Bin Laden International. He pulls it off and delivers a satisfying read.
recommended
Notes:
- Simon & Schuster, the publisher, set up an interesting companion site called Republic World News to give readers a taste of what the news might be like in the novel’s mileau with a game called President for Life with prizes that include your name being used as a character in the author’s next novel.
- Ferrigno is blogging, not just about the book, but about current events related to it like the blowup in Denmark over newspaper cartoons of Mohammed.
- S&S sent me an advance copy of the book after I responded to a call for readers I saw posted somewhere on the web a couple of months ago. So full disclosure, but given that I try to get my reading for free these days anyway not much of an influence on my opinion.
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