[Envy Chronicles 01] • Night Beyond the Night

From Publishers WeeklyIn Ware's profanity-saturated debut, Dr. Elliott Drake and his friends Quent and Wyatt are trapped underground and knocked unconscious when the immortal Strangers arrive to destroy human civilization. The trio awaken after 50 years, unaged, and escape the cave to find that two of them now have odd powers and everything familiar has vanished. After six months of wandering amid desolation, they rescue some teens from an attack of quasi-humans with the help of Jade, a mysterious woman on horseback. The teens lead the men to their city of Envy (pop. 2,000), formerly Las Vegas, where Jade draws Elliott into romance as well as efforts to understand and dispel the Strangers' powers. Ware creates a convincing and chaotic world, complete with ocean, elephants and tigers on the Nevada terrain, but the story seems too sparse to fill the planned three books. (Jan.) 

From Booklist

When Dr. Elliott Drake and his friends arrive in Sedona, Arizona, they plan on spending a few days, not 50 years. But while they’re exploring a cave, an earthquake strikes, and the next thing Elliott knows, it’s the future, and the world is a very different place. Now survival is the only thing that matters, and if Elliott and his friends can just get past the roaming gangs of zombie-like creatures known as gangas, they just might have a chance. So far Elliott’s only hope is a mysterious woman named Jade. Convincing her to trust him isn’t going to be easy, but Elliott soon finds that nothing in this brave new world is ever simple. Ware’s time-travel tale is dark, dangerous, and deliciously sexy as she packs her wildly inventive plot with plenty of clever twists and pop-culture-inspired turns guaranteed to keep readers tuned in until the second installment in this romantic paranormal series, Embrace the Night Eternal, arrives in early 2010, followed by a third. --John Charles