SOURCE: "A Creed for the Third Millennium," in Time, May 20, 1985, p. 82.

In the following review, Gray provides an unfavorable review of A Creed for the Third Millennium.

Author Colleen McCullough's fourth novel began selling briskly weeks before its official publication. The easy explanation is that the vast audience that enjoyed The Thorn Birds (1977) will buy anything McCullough writes. But something else may be fueling this phenomenon. The appearance of perfection in any form is a rare and noteworthy event. News of its arrival is bound to spread, and perhaps, in this case, the world is already out: A Creed for the Third Millennium could well be the most perfectly awful novel ever published.

The year is 2032, and a new ice age is slowly freezing up the earth. Northern U.S. cities must be largely evacuated every winter and their residents relocated in the Sunbelt. Strict population control is...