Title: Hunting for the Lamb of God
Author: Jamey O’Donnell
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 9781665533041
Pages: 278
Genre: Fiction
Reviewed by: Barbara Bamberger Scott
Pacific Book Review
Writer and deep thinker Jamey O’Donnell has constructed a twisting, terrifying scenario – a world gone insane after the obliteration of electromagnetic power in his book Hunting for the Lamb of God. This “end times” speculation combines the best of human hopes and the worst of human failings.
Carefully plotted by Iran in tandem with North Korea, the attack on the Western hemisphere is harrowingly, immediately effective – three bright flashes of light are followed by the death of all electronic devices, resulting in jetliners crashing, cars wrecking, houses set ablaze, and a chaos so total that no one could have imagined it. The book’s main characters, two neighbor boys named Jack and Mark, begin to share in the terror that grips their world, realizing how truly bad it is when Mark’s car won’t start, and then, on foot, trying to help the victims of a nearby plane crash. Mark’s father Bill, a prepper of sorts, had built an underground shelter and supplied it with dried foods and numerous flashlights, even a ham radio. Once the two boys start to figure out their means to survival, they will watch after their younger siblings, Jack’s invalid mother and
Mark’s mom Liv, who is trying to be brave though Bill is far away from home, working in Washington, DC. When Bill returns, it is to take them back to DC to continue using his expertise to ameliorate the crisis. But he will refuse the government’s offer of safety when his neighbors are not allowed to accompany them – thus is born a new alliance in which the two families will face and withstand the ugly new world together, fleeing – slowly, on foot and with laden shopping carts – to the wilderness. This is happening even as in some US cities, huge percentages of the population have been wiped out, and those that remain are resorting to cannibalism. Once ensconced in a tiny commune that calls itself New Hope, building shelters and planning for survival, the families will begin to see the deterioration of mankind’s morality play out, even in what they believed was a safe haven.
O’Donnell, who lives in Colorado where most of his story is set, is a student of national and world politics, and brings to this eerie tale certain political and social constructs that express his viewpoint. His book flies by, with action and reaction on every page. He shows the reader the innate compassion with which some humans seem naturally endowed, and the hate and ignorance of others. The scenarios depicted seem, as he has organized them, quite logical, though cold and truly frightening. How would ordinary Americans react in such a widespread crisis? There is a frisson of Biblical prophecy interlaced in the story, with the two families being devout Christians who take comfort in prayer. The book’s ending begs a sequel, and the author will surely not disappoint his readership in that regard. O’Donnell’s Hunting for the Lamb of God, with its title’s ironic hinting at the story’s unsettling plotlines, presents a rare, almost plausible dystopia for thoughtful readers to contemplate, with an accompanying shiver.
