The Second Coming

A blend of Eastern and Western prophets, Ngunda Elija Aran can heal others and levitate himself while offering love, rebirth and redemption in a violent, economically depressed America, where at least race and gender appear no longer to be issues (the U.S. president is a black woman). Many fear that Aran's Millennium movement is merely another cult out to make money and converts, and much of the overwrought narrative concerns his enemies' efforts to assassinate him. Insisting he's not Christ reborn, Aran predicts the imminent arrival of a vague Infinite Soul to coincide with a natural disasterâ€an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. Fans of apocalyptic fiction who can overlook the often clumsy, plodding prose will be in heaven. The icky jacket art, depicting a black man caught in the cross-hairs of a gun sight against an American flag backdrop, says it all.