The Bull of Mentju

Book excerpt: Ancient gods and modern armies clash in a riveting alternative-history thriller. Cheryl MacIntyre loves her work on the Menmenet homicide squad. Then she’s fired—for being American. When she plunges into Ta’an-Imenty politics to get her job back, she finds only an endless well of corruption. Shesmu za-Akhen, her lover, can’t help her because he gets a frantic call from the mountains of Washeshu, the small country to the east—his foster father has vanished. The quest to find him takes Shesmu deep into a world of indigenous spirituality that compels him to confront his personal demons. Tahefnu, a young Miwuk woman, lives in an idyllic mountain valley south of Washeshu but questions her future. She undertakes to guide Shesmu in his search for his Coyote-spirit father but loses her own Hummingbird spirit when she confronts the Remetjy gods. When a Spetsnaz team from Russkaya Amerika captures the pair, Shesmu must abandon his quest to save Tahefnu’s life and his own. Furious at Shesmu for deserting her in her time of trial, MacIntyre goes it alone at the Temple of Mentju while Shesmu and Tahefnu hike through the valley of the dead. As MacIntyre rises through the ranks of Mentju, she uncovers a shadowy plot at the highest levels of the state. NATO countries to the east plan to invade the republic with the help of the plotters. Discovered, she flees for her life and joins the Remetjy Republican Guard in the mountains to fight for her adopted country. MacIntyre, Shesmu, and Tahefnu join forces. But with a powerful army poised to invade and the gods against them, their future looks bleak—and short—unless they can get the gods on their side. Set in a North America divided between the North American Treaty Organization of the United States, Numunuu, and the Plains Federation and the Ta’an-Imenty Republic colonized by the Egyptians, the third novel in the Menmenet trilogy of alternate history thrillers confronts MacIntyre and Shesmu with political conspiracy, war, genocide, and their own demons in a world dominated as much by the gods as by men.