Evensong

Ominously credible changes in the world, which Love (Faith) has nudged a scant 45 years into the future, provide fertile ground for his extended musing on the nature of the soul, but indistinct motives and implausible reactions hamper his efforts. The promising foundation staggers under the weight of an improbable affair between bioengineered super-killer Anwar Abbas—an employee of the newly interventionist U.N.’s black-ops division, the Consultancy—and Olivia del Sarto, the archbishop of the morally ambiguous New Anglican Church. Anwar is dispatched from Malaysia to England to protect Olivia from a spookily rendered terrorist organization that has threatened to assassinate her during a U.N. summit on water rights. The obdurately analytical assassin’s attraction to the supposedly brilliant archbishop, rendered as a mess of heated fleshy appetites and coldly cutting mood swings, requires more suspension of disbelief than any of the futuristic elements. The inventive blending of religion, commerce, and government is impeded by talky, impassioned trysts, and while the action, when it arrives, is given appropriate flourish, scant satisfaction can be derived from the accompanying revelations, when for too long the story has been shouldered by characters whose underdeveloped connection remains incomprehensible. (Jan.)