Darkness of the God.

Douglas Barbour is a professor of English at the University of Alberta.
He is the author of Lyric/anti-lyric : Essays on Contemporary Poetry,
Breath Takes, and Fragmenting Body Etc.

Darkness of the God is the second part of Amber Hayward’s Children of the Panther trilogy, but it works fine as a stand-alone novel. It is a thriller of people on the run from a cult leader, whose new “religion” is sweeping the world, but whose apparent goodness and healing powers hide a dark and corrupt heart.

In the first novel, Caldos Moriera rose to head the Golden World, his healing cult turned world religion. Caldos thought he was the only onca—person with such psychic powers—in the world, and when he found there were others he at first tried to kill them. Now, as his new church has moved out of Brazil and into North America, Europe, and, he hopes, eventually the Middle East and Asia, he realizes that he might be able to use such people to help him gain ever more power. The person with the most power like his is young Ana, his own daughter, conceived when he raped her mother. He has already had her mother and the man she thought was her father killed, but she has escaped with her deaf and blind uncle and the people at an orphanage where she sought help.

Darkness of the God moves quickly into chase mode, as Ana and her friends find unlooked for help from a group of Roma, who are able to help them disappear for some time. Hayward switches point of view from chapter to chapter, including members of Ana’s entourage, of the Roma family, and of Caldos and his minions. This way, she can ratchet up the tension, provide insight into the desires and motivations of people on all sides, and suggest the ways that power can corrupt not just corruptible men like Caldos, but even, perhaps, such an “innocent” and good person as Ana.

By the end of the novel, Ana is in Caldos’s power but fighting against becoming his mere slave. Readers will want to read the ultimate confrontation to come.