It Shall Be Light in the Evening Time

 It Shall Be Light in the Evening Time, Pierre S Hughes, Independently Published, 2021

Timothy Hill is a deacon whose faith has been shattered. He has had to deal with losing his entire family to COVID-19. Each of them become his guardian angel, and show him visions that The End Is Coming (for real, this time). He tries to commit suicide, and God stops it.

James Meadows is pastor of True Light Ministries, a giant mega-church. Celebrating its 10th anniversary, James falls to the floor, unconscious, during a service. He is taken back to his office, where he is declared dead from a "heart attack." Ashley, his loving wife, demands that she be made pastor, despite never having showed an interest in running the church. Weeks later, Grace, Ashley's adult daughter, who came home for Dad's funeral, came home late one night, and found Mom doing a very un-Christian thing with two men. She runs out of their mansion, drives in a random direction, pulls over to the side of the road, and walks into the forest. Her body is found three days later, dead from an apparent suicide.

Ashley is not as Christian as she seems. When she confronts her "employer" about Grace's death, Ashley is told that she means nothing, and can be easily replaced. Ashley does not take it well.

Mass panic erupts, all over the world, when people start falling to the ground, dead (by the millions). Some people think that it is some sort of reaction to the COVID-19 vaccine. Could it be the long-predicted End Times?

This is a really good story, more like a novella than a novel. It's a little bit strange and creepy, and talks about faith and current events. This is the sort of take that should be read in front of a roaring fire, with a cup of hot tea, or other favorite beverage, at your elbow. 

John Smith: Last Known Survivor of the Microsoft Wars

John Smith: Last Known Survivor of the Microsoft Wars, Roland Hughes, Logikal Solutions, 2012

This is a dystopian novel about life after a pair of worldwide catastrophes, one of which was man-made.

Near-future Earth now has 12 continents. America is gone. The vast majority of Earth's population has perished, along with a similar percentage of human knowledge. If a machine stops working, for any reason, it is not used any longer. That is because no one alive knows how to fix the machines, along with having no facilities to make new parts to fix those machines. As far as those still alive are concerned, recorded history began about 60 years previously.

Susan Krowley, a reporter for The Times (printed twice a month, with a circulation of 5,500), interviews Smith to ask about the Microsoft Wars. Smith feels that she does not have the right frame of reference; it's like Susan was asking to read the last chapter of a mystery novel without reading the rest of the novel. Smith starts by spending a lot of time talking about Atlantis.

It was a very advanced society, the superpower of its day. The elite lived in complete luxury, while lower-class workers kept everything working. As the centuries went on, it became necessary to leave Atlantis before it was destroyed (nuclear explosion?). They took to the water in city-sized submarines (when Smith mentions computers, submarines or the Internet, Susan has no idea what he is talking about). They had mastered the science of human cloning, so a person could live for thousands of years. Their overall influence on very early humanity was huge.

More recently, as the world fell apart, Smith's family built a shelter out of a bank vault. His parents died before they could join him in the shelter, so Smith and his grandfather used it. Grandpa did not survive (there was no possibility of going outside to bury him), so Smith spent his puberty years alone in the shelter with a dead body. His shelter contains racks and racks of DVDs, filled with human knowledge. When his computer stops working, all those DVDs will become worthless, as there will be no way to read them. At the end of the book, Smith finally tells Susan all about the Microsoft Wars (no, they did not try to take over the world).

This may be rather dry reading, because it is all in interview format, but don't let that be an obstacle. This book is very interesting and well-done, it's plausible, it's a bit spooky, and it is highly recommended.