This Is the Way the World Ends

From Library Journal Near the end of Morrow's painful novel of nuclear holocaust six survivors representing mankind are tried for their complicity in the war. Denouncing them, an alien prosecutor says, "It did not have to be this way. Three virtues only were needed . . . . the greatest of these is moral outrage." That seems to be the key to a curiously contrived saga of nuclear nightmare. As scenes of family life are followed by explicit scenes of nuclear attack, as obscene theories of nuclear tactics are explained, the only possible reaction is moral outrage. Unfortunately, an overabundance of fantastic elementsthe prophecies of Nostradamus, giant prehistoric birds, a flying tailor shop, a mysterious alien race called the unadmittedis never quite joined into a coherent whole. In the ensuing confusion, the novel loses much of its power. Not recommended. Beth Ann Mills, New Rochelle P.L., N.Y.Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.