The Birds

It's all here—the stuff of epics—in Book I of Adam Novy's debut, The Avian Gospels. There is a heartless dictator, the Judge, who never hesitates to exercise his military might; his broken wife; their long-dead son; their other two children who are now of an age to significantly alter their father's plans for the future. There is the oppressed, lowest-of-the-lower-class Gypsies and the middle-class Suburbans trying to recover from devastating wars, from fear of their ruler, from a strange plague of birds that the Gypsies claim are the souls of dead loved ones, while the Priests maintain otherwise. There is a girl Gypsy warrior and fugitive, the Arsonista, who leads an underground band of rebels while seeking vengeance for the murder of her brother. And there is the suffering, single father, Zvominir, the Swede, who has hidden his extraordinary talent for controlling birds his entire life; and his son, Morgan, who inherited this gift and, with it, will maybe save (or at least entertain) them all.

At the end of Book I, the beginning of Book II, anything could happen—Zvominir and The Judge, who want nothing more than to protect their children, have lost themselves to their causes. The Judge's daughter, Katherine, is sleeping with Morgan. The Judge's son, Mike, has discovered this and attacked Morgan, who overpowers and defeats him. Mike's protector, the Tutor, ordered by the Judge to train and watch Mike, shoots all the witnesses and reports that Morgan was the aggressor, that Mike fought bravely and accurately. This of course creates more problems for Morgan, whose slightly bigger problem is that he is also sleeping with Jane the Arsonista.

And here is Novy's greatest plot development, his most intriguing hook at the end of Book I: while all the other characters have remained steady and consistent in their actions and motivations, Morgan has changed significantly. He has grown up, calmed down. At the beginning, in a confrontation with the Judge's soldiers, Morgan, embarrassed and ashamed of his father who will not fight back, who will only obey orders, "thrashed and spewed and kept on flailing, kicking, brandishing his teeth, and, truth be told, the soldiers liked the Bird Boy's spirit even as they tried to evict it via stomping and stuffing his mouth full of dirt, and spitting in his eyes, Zvominir's heartbeat just a shimmer and Morgan staring straight at his father, crying, I may die, they may kill me on this road, but I will fight." At the end of Book I, he wants only to "live a normal, little life. He wanted to be seen as a birdkeeper, a public health official whose field of expertise was birds. He wanted to be different. He thought, Dad, I want you to be proud of me." It seems apparent that this change of heart will play a large role in Book II, the conclusion to The Avian Gospels, and readers will have to wait and see what resolutions come of Morgan's relationships to Katherine, Jane, Mike, the Judge, and Zvominir. Despite the maturity Morgan seems to have acquired, he will very likely have to pay for his earlier actions, and the consequences will be either devastating or propel him to some sort of Savior status. All of this has been skillfully foreshadowed when Morgan, drugged, thinks,

I am not your savior, I can only herd you, make patters in the sky with you, be ruled by me and leave these catacombs forever, obey me as a pilgrim would a brass god poured by humans. Fly off from this dank and narrow cellar of the earth! Birds who follow me are slaughtered. Leave this catacomb of pearly nighttrees bleached in darkness, see-through trees with blurry leaves that drip their sap above the Gypsy heads and drink the sewer water in this tunnel. Escape before you're murdered, like my swans.

It seems obvious then that this...