METATRON WATCH: The angel Metatron appears in a new novel reviewed by Michael Berry in the San Francisco Cronicle:

With Vellum (DelRey; 466 pages; $14.95 paperback), Scottish first novelist Hal Duncan begins a chronicle of a millennia-long battle between the "unkin," near-immortal beings who might as well be called angels, and demons.

When Reynard Carter steals the long-lost Book of All Hours, a malleable map of the Vellum, the nexus of all possible realities, he upsets the balance of power on Earth and in other realms. Metatron and the other angels who enforce the Covenant that keeps reality from unraveling want all the unkin to choose sides. When three rebels refuse to submit to their celestial will, Metatron and his cohort rain misery down on them across various timelines, alternative worlds and mythological incarnations.

Although Duncan rings interesting changes on the standard Manichean battle between light and dark, fellow Glaswegian Grant Morrison already covered a lot of this material in "The Invisibles," one of the most under-appreciated comics series of the '90s. ...