Last Coin

In Blaylock's contemporary fantasy, the fate of the world falls into the hands of a daydreaming eccentric named Andrew Vanbergen. This quick-tempered Californian is muddling through the conversion of his rambling home into an inn and cafe when he unwittingly becomes one of the Caretakers who have kept the world safe for nearly two millennia. The danger is that someone like Andrew's mysterious guest Jules Pennyman will gather together Judas Iscariot's original 30 pieces of silver, thereby summoning up an apocalyptic magic. Against a lyric vision of the Southern California coast, cosmic conspiracy theories bump heads in a gleeful farce to produce another strange and wonderful book from the idiosyncratic author of Homunculus and Land of Dreams. (Nov.)