My Review of Victor Banis' Angel Land

***I usually don't post entire reviews on Gather (I have a review blog), but this book was just too good to not share with everyone.

Title: Angel Land
Author: Victor J. Banis
Publisher: Regal Crest Enterprises - Quest Books
ISBN: 978-1-935053-05-7
Genre: Fiction/Adventure/Futuristic
Website: http://www.vjbanis.com/

It doesn't happen often to me that a book grabs me from the first sentence and holds my undivided attention until the final sentence, but that is exactly what Angel Land did to me. I read into the early morning hours, and I just couldn't put the book down until I finished, and even though I finished, the story is still with me. That is the hallmark of a great writer.

Angel Land is a futuristic tale of the former United States, which have broken into the Fundamental Christian Territories. The Fundamental Christians are a totalitarian regime who have declared Catholics, Baptists and Jews as heretics. The "Fundies" force gay people into walled ghettos, known as Zones of Perversion, and keep them in line by providing the only medication for the one disease that everyone in the ghetto has acquired - the Sept virus, a deadly mutation of the 20th Century's AIDS virus.

Thrown into the ghetto of Angel Land, the oldest of the territories, Harvey Milk Walton is seen as a possible savior to some, and as trouble to others. Will he live up to his namesake and find a way to get word to the free states and the world about the evil of the Fundies? Will he open his heart and do the one thing he has decided can never happen - fall in love? These are just some of the questions that will keep you turning the pages of Angel Land.

This is an amazing book with humorous moments, yet also a disturbing book as well. Many of the scenes are reminiscent of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, while other scenes remind us of the civil liberties that have disappeared in the past eight years. When people start committing evil acts in the name of God and religion, the world becomes a darker place for everyone.

I give Angel Land my highest recommendation, and I think it should be read by everyone.