Michael O'Brien's stock has gone up in my mind. I just finished reading Father Elijah, and it was significantly better than the two books I'd read before (Strangers and Sojourners, Plague Journal). Maybe it was just the episode with Count Smokrev that made it so good. That dialogue was so brilliant that the showdown with the Antichrist was almost anticlimactic... no pun intended. But he handled that scene very astutely as well. The cascade of images unleashed when Father Elijah touches the reliquary is astounding poetry.

Has anyone else read the book?