Product Description

In The Descent, New York Times bestselling author Jeff Long led readers into the darkest regions of suspense and adventure. Now he returns with an apocalyptic scenario that threatens to eradicate mankind.

In Jerusalem, an American archaeologist working on Project Year Zero -- the search for the historical Jesus -- crosses the line between science and theft when he helps plunder an old Roman landfill beneath the crucifixion grounds known as Golgotha. Nathan Lee Swift's crime will have devastating consequences. When an ancient relic is opened on the black market, a two-thousand-year-old plague is unleashed -- and the dying begins.

As the pestilence threatens to wipe out humanity, he finds a chance for redemption -- by finding the cure. Skirting the edges of civilization, Nathan Lee sets out to find his younger daughter and travels to Los Alamos, where a desperate tactic has been adopted: the use of human lab rats cloned from Project Year Zero remains. Now Nathan Lee will come face-to-face with one special cloned human who may hold the key to salvation -- in more ways than one. Patient Zero claims to remember who he is....

And his name is Jesus Christ.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #417080 in Books
• Published on: 2003-02-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 512 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The sum of this complex tale is more than its parts of medical thriller, archeological fiction, action/adventure and doomsday scenario, as Long (The Descent) thrills with an intricate puzzle. A Greek collector of religious relics searching for artifacts from Christ's crucifixion sends samples of a powder dated to Year Zero to three foreign labs, thereby unwittingly unleashing a plague organism that races through the world's populations. Young archeologist Nathan Lee survives a murderous attack by his crooked professor, David Ochs, but lands in a Tibetan jail as the plague spreads. When the guards open the prison, Nathan makes his way through abandoned territories to Siberia and across to Alaska just ahead of the plague, heading for his daughter and divorced wife in D.C. He finds them gone and is mistaken by his old employer, the Smithsonian, as the messenger expected to take Year Zero bones from a Golgotha dig to the now fortified Los Alamos labs, where scientists are cloning humans who were crucified in the same time as Christ in hopes of finding an antibody from those who had natural resistance. Parlaying the bones for a spot in the restricted compound, Nathan is put in charge of the Golgotha clones by genius young scientist Miranda Abbot. She and Nathan become lovers and the nemeses of a mad scientist, who, along with Ochs, does fiendish things to clones and plague victims while disrupting the researchers. Long mounts one nearly impossible escape scene after another and doesn't miss a step as he builds a no-win scenario, then pulls it out. The shifting terrain is vibrantly portrayed, the religious fallout is deftly handled and the characters engage completely as they face a gruesome end to civilization in this dashing, exciting thriller. (Apr.)
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
In his follow-up to The Descent, Long once again combines adventure, horror, religion, and philosophy in a tale that can be, at times, absorbing reading. Nathan Lee Swift is a young anthropologist who falls prey to Professor Ochs, a grave-robber in the worst sense of the word. Miranda Abbott is a scientific wunderkind who has managed to create a way to clone humans. When a virulent plague dating from 00 C.E. (the titular year zero) is released and sweeps across most of the world, leaving billions dead, it is up to Miranda, Nathan Lee, and her scientist colleagues to find a cure. In order to best do that, they make a desperate bid to find antibodies by cloning humans from the first century who may have survived the plague. Those who enjoyed The Descent will find Year Zero equally compelling, though the ending seems a bit rushed. Recommended for all suspense collections. Alicia Graybill, Fairbury P.L., NE
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Long exploded onto the fantasy-adventure scene in 1999 with The Descent, an original, audacious, and hugely entertaining novel about an underground civilization and a place called Hell. Wisely, Long has not attempted to top that over-the-top novel; he has, however, put together a story that equals it for freshness and ambition. An ancient plague has been unleashed upon the modern world, a plague that has no cure. There is only one hope for humanity: clone human beings who survived a similar plague millennia ago--human beings from the year zero, from the time when Jesus lived. (Luckily, a recent archaeological expedition has unearthed plenty of bones from the year zero.) In the quest for the cure to the plague, will scientists clone the son of God himself? Adventure novels don't get much gutsier than this, and it is only Long's skill as a storyteller that keeps the tale from becoming ludicrous. He makes way-out-in-left-field plotlines seem plausible, and he makes the fantastic seem real. Fans of The Descent (or other bigger-than-life thrillers such as Allan Folsom's Day after Tomorrow) will no doubt flock to this one; with aggressive marketing and word of mouth, it could--and should--go through the roof. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

WOW is the word.
I can't begin to fathom how or why this book didn't even crack the top ten bestseller lists, especially after a knockout editorial review posted on CNN.com simply headlined "Wow". And "Wow" is the only way to describe this novel. I have read a few lukewarm reader reviews on Amazon, and if someone doesn't "dig" "Year Zero", they must have discriminating tastes far beyond any author's ablity to please them.

I'm not going to write one detail about Jeff Long's eye-popping plot. That's for the reader to discover and be carried away by. Suffice it to say that it is, in my view, basically a sci-fi story, with a strong footing in religious history. There are some creepy seasonings of a Stephen King nature, although the closest King has ever come to the standard of YZ's excellence came and went a long time ago with "The Stand". And if you like Michael Crichton, you will be on the right track in running, not walking, to buy "Year Zero". However (and this is one of the book's pleasant surprises) I found Long's character development above and beyond Chrichton's.

Now here is one small warning: "Year Zero" is not a hard read, but it definitely requires more than a bit of attention. I started the first chapter in the midst of some everyday distractions, and I was utterly lost, and then began again when I was able and willing to concentrate. Once I found my focus and got into the swing of the first 4 or 5 pages, I was totally hooked and getting every word.

Hopefully, Jeff Long's next book will be just as good, and his publisher will give it the marketing push it deserves.

More than meets the eye! Promising writer!
I bought this book for a vacation read, as it promised to be a fun, quick read. The premise behind the book is ingenious--an ancient plague is unleashed and scientists believe the clue to the cure lies in cloning people who were alive 2000 years ago during the time of the original plague.

A clever idea, but this book turned out to be much more than a simple disaster tale. Underlaying the simple plot is an appreciation for beauty and a sense of wonder that adds immensely to the depth and strength of the book. The images of a decimated world are strange and beautiful. And the descriptions of the high Himalayas are stunning. Even the depiction of the plague victims embues them with a strange dignity and beauty.

However, despite the interesting premise of the novel, I would say it spends less time on science than on the mysteries of human relationships and their power. If you look too closely at the science behind the novel, you may not care for this book. (Humans cloned from crucifixion fragments from Golgotha retain their memory!? Huh?) My advice is to suspend critical thought and enjoy the considerable pleasures of this book by accepting it for what it is--a heart-felt look at why we love and how we live with honor. I found this book entirely captivating, and several weeks after reading it I'm still pondering it.

I will be looking for other books by this author!

swept away!
Here it is, the ultimate Survivor episode, a thinking person's adventure tale. The writing hooked me with the very first sentence, "The wound was their path", and what a path it becomes, full of twists and surprises and Nathan Lee's heart full of hope. I've never seen a book like this, with such wild premises that seem to have no connection, but which by the end are woven into a single thread. On the one hand Year Zero is a novel about the virus from hell, the big extinction event that we humans think can't happen to us. Then there's the cloning of human lab rats that has echoes of Frankenstein and Brave New World. Nathan Lee's escape through the Himalayas is almost a story in itself, but Long keeps on spinning his web, and somehow, amazingly ties it all together in the end. I started describing the story to a friend, then just stopped and gave her the book to read for herself. This one defies simple description. All I can say is, dive in and get swept away.