In the immediate future, an alien race of religious zealots plans to honor their god through the ritualistic annihilation of our planet. Only one person knows this: Milan Marlowe, the world's most powerful man, a megalomaniacal media baron with ideas about how to turn the end of the world into a profit for the company. The only hope for the planet is to meet the invaders according to their own customs and set forth “The Challenge of the Heretic”—a one-on-one gladiator battle for the right to exist. Marlowe launches Beast Wars, a televised interspecies death match tournament to determine Earth’s strongest creature.Enter Bruno Bolo—a brutish but lovable Florida alligator trainer who finds himself navigating a world of feuding black-belt gorilla trainers, corporatized killer sharks, on-call blues combos, phony volcanoes, great space arks, Yeats-quoting pit fighters, and looming alien eradicators. Following the end of a shocking chain of hard knocks, Bruno emerges as Earth’s last, desperate hope.Shot through with sly social commentary and eye-popping action and populated with the most bizarre—yet utterly compelling—cast of characters in recent memory, Nature of the Beast is a stunning visual and literary tour de force.