This is a controversial novel. There can be no denying this fact, when the plot involves the coming of the Old Testament Messiah in the middle part of the 21st Century. Even more so when this messiah, Jeremiah the B, is a womanising con-artist drug addict who makes his money from prostitution, pornography and drugs.

The main character in the book is Solomon Moody Moore, the leading "businessman" in Chicago. He is the lead player in all of the criminal sectors of Chicago, when Jeremiah the B comes along and begins to undermine him. Moore naturally reacts by attempting to have Jeremiah killed, a task which proves harder than it should.

There are many strengths to this novel, as there is to all of Resnick's writing. He manages to sum up the changes that have happened to society concisely, describing the drives and depravity of mid 21st Century Chicago dwellers without boring the reader with vast descriptive passages. Resnick is a writer who, like many others, has thought through his background thoroughly but he does not then feel the need to laboriously prove this, content instead to utilise subtler methods of highlighting the progress of society.

The main characters are rounded and believable, consistent in their actions throughout. The lead-ons and supporting characters described just sufficiently to elevate them to human status rather than statistic, but not laboured upon for four pages merely to die one page later.

Whilst the plot is not as sharpened as some of his later works this still exhibits some of the traditional Resnick elements. There is an awareness here of the historical importance of the events described. In most of his books the events would be recorded, interpreted and discussed long after in their worlds, and he wrotes with some of this in mind. In this at the end of the first chapter he remarks of how historians would have given anything to have witnessed the first meeting of the two main characters.

All in all, this is good writing, comfortable without being predictable, well structured and skillfully delivered. If you do not have a problem with the (ir)religious nature of the plot of this book and enjoy SF dealing with social change rather than technological change then I would heartily recommend this book.