« The Shadows of God » Greg Keyes

The alchemical catastrophe that Sir Isaac Newton inadvertently unleashed late in the seventeenth century has transformed Europe into a cold, dead wasteland in the eighteenth—much to the delight of the otherworldly malakim, who have set humanity at war with itself for the sin of dabbling in the arcane.

The last inhabitable territory, the New World, is now the coveted prize of the surviving European warlords. From the West, Russian forces led by the Sun Boy, child of the powerful French sorceress Adrienne de Mornay de Montchevreuil, move relentlessly onward, leaving a trail of devastation in their wake. British troops in the East are equally merciless in their conquests.

All that stands against them is a motley alliance of colonists, Native Americans, scientists, philosophers, displaced Europeans, and others led by Ben Franklin, now an alchemist of great repute, and Red Shoes, a Choctaw shaman with questionable motivations. But no matter who wins or loses, the manipulating angels and demons are always watching, and the malakim are determined to be the ultimate victors.