NOVEL'S HEROINE FACES ANCIENT EVIL; MOTHER MORE CONCERNED ABOUT HER JOB INTERVIEWS

Readers of the preview of Mythos: Book One, Mr. Samman's Saudi mythic fantasy novel, report that the book contains two terrifying forces. The first breaks open in the AlUla desert, hides in a Diriyah parking lot and screams a word in a language dead for thousands of years. The second is the heroine's mother, who keeps lining up job interviews with relatives.

Career analysts say they know which they would rather face. "An ancient evil wants your soul," said one. "A mother with a list of cousins wants your CV. Only one of them follows up."

The heroine, Manal, is joined by her brother Firas, whose obsession with history looks, in the language of this week's front page, very much like a side quest. Readers expect it to become the main one the moment a vampire king named Hadd turns up, at which point the only person in the family qualified to deal with him may be the one who studied what nobody told him to.

The Careers Desk notes that no job interview in the preview has yet been attended, and that nobody in the book appears to blame anyone for that.