Upon the release of “L’Alliance des Trois”, the first volume of Maxime Chattam’s “Autre-Monde” saga, in paperback on November 3, French crime author Nice Premium invites you to rediscover this fantastic tale.
It all begins in New York, the day after Christmas. Matt and Tobias have been friends since childhood, since forever, and when the city is swept away by a gigantic storm of wind and snow, they turn to each other. This storm has brought bluish lightning resembling hands coming to capture every human. This storm that no one had foreseen. They are alone, with little left of their past life. They must organize, fight to survive in this new, strange, and obscure World.
Matt and Tobias, convinced they cannot be the only survivors of this event, set out to find other survivors. Heading south, they will encounter red and blue beetles, Ambre, the Long Walkers, amnesiac adult Cyniks, Pans, Gluttons – barbaric and violent beings mutated after the Storm, Stilters, a Red Queen, and the terrifying Raupéroden. Their journey is just beginning.
Maxime Chattam, known for his terrifying and highly effective thrillers, changes genre but not style here, offering us an incursion into fantasy. “I wanted to develop my own imagination while constructing my reflection around the loss of innocence, particularly in relation to Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’. I saw this saga as a tribute to my masters: Tolkien, but especially Twain, Salinger (‘The Catcher in the Rye’), Golding (‘Lord of the Flies’)… it was meant to be a youth and adult novel.”
The gamble is successful; it’s precise and well-constructed. The anxiety is immediate as the storm arrives within the first pages. There’s hardly any time to settle into reality before it’s turned upside down.
Of course, the references are obvious, the trio immediately brings to mind that of Harry Potter, but Maxime Chattam gradually sets himself apart from them.
With an ecological slant, this initiatory epic will likely unfold in two cycles of three novels, plus a final one to close this adventure in the Other World.
The author’s skill is evident in drawing the reader into an imaginary world he constructs entirely, making them participate in the story. His words make us live alongside Matt, Tobias, and Amber for 480 pages, and like the Earth reclaiming its rights over humanity, the reader is captivated, swept away by the imagination and what has been created after the storm, these gigantic monsters lurking, this intense, abundant vegetation covering everything.
