Thursday, September 25, 2014

The Furies

Book Jacket for: The furiesIn The Furies by Mark Alpert we are given the premise that witches are real.  Not in the sense of old women creating spells, gathering in covens but in the sense that there was a real set of individuals who really were different behind all the witch hunts of the past.  In the book there is a family with an x-linked gene that allows female carriers to live, barring accident, essentially forever.  These women, with such long lives, develop science & steer their communities in the early years of mankind and fall prey to hysteria about differences as time moves on.  We find them in this book completely isolated.  Living in a cave in Michigan and interacting only rarely with the outside world.  There has been a civil disruption since the men of the family (deprived of x-linked longevity) want a serum developed to give them what their sisters & mothers have.  The book then, is essentially a story of this (very violent) conflict through the eyes of an outsider who stumbled into the whole mess somewhat against his will. 


The book is a fairly straightforward, kind of violent, thriller, with lots of death for the very old.  The author spoiled it for me with his endnote so I can’t give it a hearty endorsement, however, the book is fine if you like a shoot-em-up thriller.