This widely reviewed novel, which appeared the same year as the first Saint-Germain novel, is both bleak and poorly constructed. The bleakness comes from the fact that this is a postholocaust novel that offers no hope for the future; the weakness in construction owes its existence to the author's expansion of the story into a full length work.

In this work, Doomsday has come, but readers are not certain how, except that pollution is extreme and plants and animals have both adapted to it in bizarre ways long since. The Ponderosa pines are red now, and deadly water spiders that resemble scorpions bunch together wherever there is water; their sting brings a swift, painful death.

Danger is virtually everywhere people are found. Goups of indeterminate size range the California setting of this novel and possibly elsewhere, all viciously mean men on motorcycles who owe...