Doodled Books is proud to present a rare scoop of The Reapers are the Angels by secret author Alden Bell. This book has been hailed `An instant post-apocalyptic classic' and Like I Am Legend we think it will become a classic of the genre. Although this author has written books under another name this is his debut writing as Alden Bell.
Each rare first edition book has been signed, lined, dated, doodled and numbered in New York. They are first printings.
Review
'The Reapers are the Angels is a real triumph, a literary fantasy where the zombies are mostly window-dressing. This is a novel more concerned with people and their relationships, with the human spirit and all its flaws and frailties. It's a story driven by the characters' needs to establish some sort of order in their lives, some sort of goal to cling to, and all the pitfalls that arise because of this need. It speaks of resilience and belief, of hope and sorrow, and the need to look for the beauty in life, no matter how hard that might be. An instant post-apocalyptic classic.' --Speculative Horizons
'Bell's vision of a fractured humanity sheltering from a zombie menace is also richly drawn and is incredibly easy to get into. For every `normal' community sheltering in a city there is a family like the Grierson's to remind you that an event such as this can leave people irrevocably messed up, even though they may look like they're living a normal life. Bell's `post zombie America' is a land where I was more than happy to spend time and a little bit sad to leave.'
--Graeme's Fantasy Book Review
'With a poetic depth, brilliant description, and horrifying exploits, Bell presents a distinctive story. I will keep this book, I will buy the final publication, and I will read this book again and again.' --Book Savvy
'The prose is marvellous, full of acute observations and wonderful, heady descriptions... it's a flux of dreamy and bleak images, a blurring of the lines between being a human and an animal. And I loved every word of it.' --Mark Charan Newton
`I loved every word of it' --Mark Charan Newton
`Alden Bell provides an astonishing twist on the southern gothic: like Flannery O'Connor with zombies' -- Michael Gruber, The Book of Air and Shadows
`Alden Bell will snatch your attention and keep it until long after you close this book' --Tom Franklin, Hell at the Breach
`Soaked in all the blood that any horror fan could desire, the effluvia rendered in a high Southern Gothic style as redolent of rotting magnolia as anything written by William Faulkner or Cormac McCarthy' --Charlie Huston, Sleepless
`It is a haunting and beautifully written vision of fractured humanity that may soon be regarded as a classic within its genre'
--Book of the Month, Fantasy Book Review
`With a poetic depth, brilliant description, and horrifying exploits, Bell presents a distinctive story. I will keep this book, I will buy the final publication, and I will read this book again and again' --Book Savvy
`An instant post-apocalyptic classic' --Speculative Horizons
`Like I Am Legend I think it will become a classic of the genre and one against which others will be measured' --Steve's Fantasy Book Reviews
`The Reapers are the Angels is a beautifully written book, its prose fat and rich in the Southern Gothic style... A curious and promising debut that will likely attract readers from both the speculative fiction and the more mainstream or literary audiences' --Read in a Single Sitting
`An exquisitely bleak tale and an unforgettable heroine' -- Publishers Weekly
`If you loved Justin Cronin's The Passage, this summer's vampire hit, you'll get a charge out of The Reapers Are the Angels. It's a literary/horror mashup that is unsettlingly good'
--USA Today
'I love this novel because it's such an intimate story, in an epic wasteland. Temple is haunting me, long after I've put the book down - a fierce, lost, lovely fighter, so convinced of her own evil that she wanders the world, finding beauty and miracles in tiny, ordinary things. The whole novel asks huge questions about who we are, while somehow celebrating us in the middle of an apocalypse...' --Russell T Davies (writer and producer of Doctor Who and creator, writer and producer of Torchwood)
'From the entertaining set up Alden Bell keeps the pace flowing, with the minimalism of Cormac McCarthy's The Road fitting naturally into the God-fearing, Southern state environment... its the characters which draw you into the book.' --Bookgeeks.co.uk
Product Description
God is a slick god. Temple knows. She knows because of all the crackerjack miracles still to be seen on this ruined globe...
Older than her years and completely alone, Temple is just trying to live one day at a time in a post-apocalyptic world, where the undead roam endlessly, and the remnant of mankind who have survived, at times, seem to retain little humanity themselves.
This is the world she was born into. Temple has known nothing else. Her journey takes her to far-flung places, to people struggling to maintain some semblance of civilization – and to those who have created a new world order for themselves.
When she comes across the helpless Maury, she attempts to set one thing right, if she can just get him back to his family in Texas then maybe it will bring redemption for some of the terrible things she's done in her past. Because Temple has had to fight to survive, has done things that she's not proud of and, along the road, she’s made enemies.
Now one vengeful man is determined that, in a world gone mad, killing her is the one thing that makes sense…
About the Author
Alden Bell lives in New York with his wife, the Edgar-award-winning novelist Megan Abbott. For the past nine years, he has taught high school English at an Upper East Side prep school (a modern orthodox co-educational Yeshiva). Since 2002, he has also taught literature and cultural studies courses as an adjunct professor at the New School. Prior to coming to New York, he grew up in the heart of Orange County: Anaheim, home of Disneyland. He graduated from Berkeley with a degree in English and a minor in creative writing, where his instructors included Bharati Mukherjee, Leonard Michaels and Maxine Hong Kingston. In 2000, he received his Master’s and Ph.D. in English at New York University, specializing in twentieth-century American and British literature.
Product details
- First Edition First Printing
- Hardcover: 302 pages
- Publisher: Tor (3 Sep 2010)
- ISBN-10: 0230748643
- ISBN-13: 978-0230748644
- Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 14 x 3.4 cm
