Book of the Week: Alpha and Omega.

Alpha and Omega is a bit of a departure for Harry Turtledove in that it is not alternate history: it is, instead, a look at what it would be like if [X]-millenarianism became a thing (prefix carefully not specified). As in, Third Temple rebuilding and red heifers and just how literally* Christians should take the Book of Revelation. There’s a lot of people who will find the book to be rank heresy, of course, but the folks likely to be most upset are hard-shelled secularists: Turtledove does his very best to keep from using the standard lazy slams at various faith traditions, and in a lot of ways his fundamentalist Christian viewpoint character is the most open-minded of the bunch**. Even if his eventual conclusions lead right back to the ‘rank heresy’ thing (a result admittedly shared by every other viewpoint character in this book).

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