Gerard is commissioned by the Vatican to create a reliquary for God's bones. The Vatican corrupts the vision of Gerard's creation and he is subsequently commissioned by a megalomaniac psychologist to carve graven images of a new pantheon of gods designed, in conjunction with a new drug, to cure the West of the plague by weakening the doppelgangers. Nora's quest to cure her son eventually brings her to the temple of this new religion, where the storylines intertwine. The Eternal Footman is a delightful read. Wit and intelligence abound throughout the text.
Surprising ideas take the characters through unexpected and intriguing incidents.
The doppelgangers drop uproariously tasteless death jokes with almost every breath. And yet as the book concluded, I found myself left with several reservations. A few details were left dangling uncomfortably. For example, Gerard sculpts the new pantheon out of a strange meteor that crashed in Mexico. So much is made of the sculptural properties of this meteor, that I couldn't help but feel that it was a set-up for a revelation or connection that was forgotten or dropped without revising the now unnecessary foreshadowing.