AGE OF SHIVA (The Pantheon Series) - Softcover

James Lovegrove's latest volume in the bestselling Pantheon series - which brings the gods to Earth and pitches them against secular, hi-tech forces - rings the changes with an ingenious conceit. This time the gods are manmade and fighting for their lives as they attempt to outwit their creators and save the planet. The novel hits the ground running when comics artist Zachary Bramwell is abducted by a quartet of thugs and spirited to the tropical island redoubt of the Trinity, ruthless businessmen whose greed threatens the planet with nuclear Armageddon. Through the process of "theogenesis" the Trinity has transformed men into superheroes - the 10 avatars of Vishnu from the Hindu mythos - whom they plan to hire out as mercenaries. Laddish, wisecracking Bramwell finds himself in the thick of things, and we watch him mature and develop as he takes on the mantle of Hanuman, the monkey god, and confronts the Trinity in a wonderfully ambiguous set-piece denouement. --The Guardian

Zachary Bramwell, better known as the comics artist Zak Zap, is pushing forty and wondering why his life isn t as exciting as the lives of the superheroes he draws. Then he s shanghaied by black-suited goons and flown to Mount Meru, a vast complex built atop an island in the Maldives. There, Zak meets a trio of billionaire businessmen who put him to work designing costumes for a team of godlike super-powered beings based on the ten avatars of Vishnu from Hindu mythology. The Ten Avatars battle demons and aliens and seem to be the saviours of a world teetering on collapse. But their presence is itself a harbinger of apocalypse. The Vedic fourth age of civilisation, Kali Yuga, is coming to an end, and Zak has a ringside seat for the final, all-out war that threatens the destruction of Earth.