Project Antichrist by Pavel Kravchenko
Review by fellow author and online acquaintance therefore unrated
Pavel Kravchenko’s debut novel Project Antichrist is subtitled A science fiction thriller and it falls into the sub-genre of a slow-burning depiction of the near future where you are never quite sure what the world has come to. It is set in Chicago during the mid 21st century and is centred around a television celebrity, Luke Whales, who is a fugitive from justice. One twist that the blurb had made clear was that aliens (of the extraterrestrial variety) were among those in pursuit.
Gradually the book unfolds twist after twist about what is actually going on in the United States a few decades into the future. That slow-burning first part of the book is the best part of the novel, but then I am not the target audience as action scenes generally leave me cold. The twists and turns are maintained to the end, but I found the closing chapters unsatisfying. The action part of the denouement stretched the limits of my credulity and the closing revelations about what was really going on in the novel did not seem a good fit for the preceding chapters.
I read the novel because the blurb offered something different and it certainly delivered on that front. For my liking it was a little too different to the point of unbelievable, but readers with more of a liking for action scenes may respond differently.
© Mercia McMahon 2014
