End of the Century by Chris Roberson

In 498, Galaad of Powys is a farmer who has been having strange visions of a woman in white, who is imprisoned on a strange island, but where, he does not know. He hopes that Artor, newly made king after being a Dux Bellorum, can help him get to the bottom of the mystery and free the strange White Lady.

In 1887, two weeks before Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, Consulting Detective Sandford Blank and his friend and compatriot Roxanne Bonaventure, are summoned by the police to the site of a monstrous crime. A corpse whose hands were sheared off cleanly, seemingly in a single blow. And this incites Blank's horror, for he's seen wounds like these before, a decade earlier when he chased a villain called "The Torso Killer" who was never caught, but seemingly ceased murdering people.

And in 2000, Alice Fell, an American teenager suffering from Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, comes to England to track down the truth of her own visions- that of a massive eye glaring out over the city of London, which she takes to be the Millennium Eye, the massive "Big wheel" that offers views of pretty much all of London. Normally, sufferers of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy have visions, but different ones, while the ones she has over and over are all pretty much the same.

As Galaad persuades Artor and his closest companions to leave their boring ruling of the country behind and have one last adventure before age slows and stiffens them, he finds Artor a willing listener to his persuasion. He even knows where the island that Galaad has seen in his visions is located- in Cornwall, where his old friend Tristan rules over half the country with his co-King, Mark. And when they get there, they discover that the entire land is afraid. The island of Galaad's vision his been lost in a misty white fog, which never goes away and blankets more of the country with every day.

But worse than this is the red Rider, a man who slays all he comes upon with a single blow, and who is protected by a fierce and seemingly unkillable set of White Hounds with red paws and ears. All who encounter the Red Rider are slain, and those who enter the fog are never seen again. Can Artor and Galaad and Artor's men penetrate to the heart of the mystery and the imprisoned White Lady, or will they, too, die at the hands of the Red Rider and his hounds, or vanish into the country which lies at the heart of the mist?

Sandford Blank knows horror at the scene of such grisly killings, but he's also determined to bring the slayer to justice, for he suspects that the Torso Killer, the one who got away from him, is the same man doing this now. And this new body he's been summoned to see is not the killer's first victim, but his third. As Sandford investigates to see what may have tied the victims together, he realizes that he may also be on the Killer's list, and that his friend Roxanne holds the secrets of times to come.

But the victims are tied together: they all were working or associated with an archaeological Dig in Cornwall that unearthed startling new artifacts that may have incited the killer's rage. But what is so special about these artifacts, and why is the killer going after seemingly any of those who have come into contact with them? And can Sandford, Roxanne and the others who have come into contact with the artifacts survive contact with the killer, who is less a man than a killing machine?

And Alice hasn't been in London long when she runs out of money and ends up nearly getting into a fight in a pub and meeting a blonde biker chick named Roxanne. But when she's nearly killed by a pack of snarling white dogs with red paws and ears, she's saved by a most unlikely savior- a retired spy who's been squatting in an abandoned railway station.

She has nothing to fear from him, he tells her- she's not his type, wrong set of tackle. But Alice doesn't know why anyone would want to kill her, and her visions give no clue to the mystery. But when a mysterious Red man is revealed as the killer on her trail, Alice finds herself falling into the past, where she alone can uncover the secret to the mysteries of the past and present. Because if Alice doesn't find a solution to the problem, all life on earth, and the universe, will end.

This was a very strange book, split up into sets of three storylines- one for each era, which could range from a chapter to four or five chapters in a row before moving on into the next era and the next set of characters and problems. At first, you aren't sure what the stories have to do with each other, but you soon begin to see overlapping characters- The Red Slayer and his strange dogs- who are reminiscent of fairy dogs from Celtic myth. The question soon comes- what are these things, and how can they exist in so many times? Are they the same being or different ones.

Other secrets, I latched onto right away. Roxanne is apparently timeless and knows more about things than she is telling. She seems like she might be interested in Sandford, but though he treats her with endless courtesy and gentility, he's not interested in her as a romantic partner, and it was fairly easy to see why. Alice's Friend the spy, Stillman, knows a bit too much about the weird and alien technology that seems to pop up here, there and everywhere, and though there is a sword that cannot be drawn by anyone yet living, Alice seems to pull that trick off just fine.

Of course, after the fact, I discovered that most of these characters, if not all, were characters from other books that Chris Roberson had written earlier, all except for Alice Fell, who is a new character. Despite that fact, I found the book very enjoyable, and read it for the possible inclusion in our teen reading program. But my conclusion is that, while the story is great reading, I felt that teens might find it a bit too challenging a read for them (exceptional teens excluded, or course). The story is a braided rope comrprised of many more braided ropes, and I felt that some teens might find the challenge of reading it to be a bit too much.

But I enjoyed it. It not only combines fantasy, mystery and science fiction elements, in the end the story is pure science fiction, and quite good at that. So many ideas combined here that it was very slow-going reading, but in the end, the ending more than makes up for the struggle of reading it. Highly recommended.