Terry Hayes, the author of the #1 global bestseller I AM PILGRIM, returns with his eagerly awaited second novel. Ten years in the making and nearly 800 pages long, THE YEAR OF THE LOCUST defies categorization.

In the first several sections, narrated by CIA operative Ridley Kane, a terse, tense spy novel set in Middle Eastern and Central Asian hotspots unfolds. Kane is looking for a man with important information but instead meets his nemesis, Roman Kazinsky, in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, home of the Cosmodrome spaceport. Here he also discovers that religious zealotry combined with technological sophistication may produce potential devastation for much of the world.

"Hayes has devised a fine plot and created some memorable characters in THE YEAR OF THE LOCUST. But anyone who thinks that what they’re getting here is a typical espionage thriller will be in for a big surprise!"

Kane manages to miraculously escape before Kazinsky gets the better of him. On a subsequent trip in a stealth submarine, the rest of the crew dies. But by some bizarre law of physics, Kane is catapulted into an eerily familiar future.

At this point, it is best not to give away too much of the plot. Through a series of coincidences, Kane realizes that he must return to Baikonur in order to save the world from imminent doom. This requires him to find a crew for the same submarine he arrived on and to locate Kazinsky, who holds the key to the time warp conundrum. By intercepting him, he may be able to reverse the devastation that has engulfed the globe.

There are all sorts of scientific references that supposedly explain how time can leap forward and backward; how the earth could have been overtaken by spores that change humans’ DNA; and how one man can teleport between the past and present, and back again. However, the book doesn’t explain how Kane can be in an alternate future that won’t exist once he reverses it, yet everyone seems to remember aspects of it.

Hayes has devised a fine plot and created some memorable characters in THE YEAR OF THE LOCUST. But anyone who thinks that what they’re getting here is a typical espionage thriller will be in for a big surprise!