Ave Judas

It is the year of our Lord 2449. The Pope believes he has just forty-four days

to avert a galactic Armageddon by discrediting anew the most reviled man in history ...

Owen Stonehaven is leading the strangest of lives. As a child, his mother gives

him to a huge and fierce rat kangaroo; as an adult, the Church has him shut

into a derelict and lightless spaceship.

Freed, he returns to his home planet, a surreal place that is roamed by lizards of barely imaginable size, towering thunderbirds and ferocious marsupial lions - for on New Yamba a master cloner has been at work re-creating the megafauna of Australia's past. Owen's plan is to find the mysterious coin his mother stole on the day she died, a well-worn piece of silver he hopes will help reveal his true identity, and to await a visit by the brother he loves, Henry, a priest.

Extremists detonate a bomb and Henry is hurt. Owen realises he is the subject of a conspiracy engineered by an all-powerful and ruthless man. As he begins to understand his origins, he finds he cannot shake the darkness at his core. Is betrayal in his genes?