The B.P.R.D. agents confront frogs and red apes underneath Agartha, in the Ural Mountains, above the Arctic Circle, the setting for the very first B.P.R.D. adventure. I had to skim through that story again to understand better what was going on in this one.

Abe learns that he is an evolved anthro-amphibian, Homo Sapiens to the frog's Neanderthals.

Liz Sherman, the fire-starter, remains in her rut. She is still tormented by Memnan Saa's ghost, which is almost as bad as being tormented by Memnan Saa in the flesh. She is still being manipulated by more powerful men into using her power as a deux es machina to get the writers out of plot dead ends. (Oh, I meant to say that she again needs the encouragement of a sage to activate her fire power and thus incinerate her enemies and rescue her friends in the nick of time.) The results are a little different this time, for she is ends up out of fuel, perhaps for good, and her blast may have caused the geologic disasters that change the world.

I knew that half of Nebraska and half of Munich had been already been destroyed. Now the islands of Borneo and Sulawesi have disappeared and Indonesia is in ruins. If that reminds anyone of what the Oannes Society tried to do earlier, know that at least one of the Victorian cyborgs is alive and watching. The Salton Sea in California has drained and a subterranean behemoth has risen in its crater, spewing a red smog that turns people into monsters. All this leads to the B.P.R.D. being internationalized as a UN organization. Huh.

The writers have declared that this book ends the cycle of B.P.R.D. stories about the plague of frogs. The second cycle will be called Hell on Earth.

I wasn't crazy about the frog stories, but I was impressed by the post-apocalyptic vision in the writing and the art. I can see a lot of good stories coming from this point of departure. I hope they are fresh stories. I'm tired of Liz being used as a game changer and a punching bag. I'm tired of spores or smog or whatever turning people into monsters. I hope Abe's new story line about his destiny doesn't resemble Hellboy's old story line about his destiny. I also hope that Abe in the books becomes as interesting as Abe in the movies. ( )