3/5 Odd Mix of Christian Fantasy and Rated R Mystery/Suspense
*mild spoilers possible in discussion, though I will keep things as vague as possible.
Introduction:
Summary:
Hope Anderson has the ultimate God encounter and picks up some awesome spiritual gifts to boot.
Additional Comments:
The Neutral:
– The training scenes dragged on too long. That section’s about ½ the 12 hour book.
– Certain details like where Hope works were not very clear throughout the book. Not even sure the title of the place is given, except it’s a labor office. The whole reports thing kind of lost me because I wasn’t sure what these people did. Sounded like tax collection for a while.
– The pacing is very slow for about 10 hours.
The Oddities:
– Most of the book is squeaky clean in terms of language and content, but there’s a scene about 11 and a half hours into the 12 and a half hour audiobook that blows all that away. It’s a very odd mix. On the one hand, it’s honest about how twisted people can be, but literally the entire rest of the 12+ hour book was church picnics and Hallmark channel he-loves-me-but-I’m-not-ready-for-another-man romance stuff. Seriously, even most of the spiritual warfare went down like “she saw a creepy demon and glared at it … it screeched and went away” then BOOM hardcore torture for 5 minutes and BOOM again back to Hallmark romance. Gives one mental whiplash.
– This is probably only an issue with the audiobook. But most of the book is in the first person perspective, yet there are several shifts to God’s point of view or Satan’s point of view. In a book, you can have things like asterix to set apart these sections, but this audiobook lacked any such forewarnings of an abrupt scene shift. (It made the narrator sound nuts, though the rest of her performance was okay.)
– One overall end message came across as “God wants you (Hope) to grow the kingdom by having babies with his brothers” which might be true, but out of context just comes across as weird.
– The cover does not fit the vibe for the book. I’m getting nightclub scene vibes from the cover not spiritual warfare. It would fit better if Hope was an alcoholic addicted to champagne or something.
The Good:
– There’s some cool spiritual warfare stuff.
– The way spiritual gifts were handled in here is pretty cool.
– I liked some of the scenes of Hope training with God.
Conclusion:
If you can handle a LOT of intensity in one scene and a much more sedate pace everywhere else, it’s an intriguing peek into spiritual warfare.
Associate links to follow…
Amazon Prime
Audible – If you’d like a free book, check out some of my works.
