book review

i recently finished reading the circle trilogy by ted dekker: black, red, and white. FAN. TASTIC. you need to read them. yes, need.

the extremely-well-written harry potter series had set the bar pretty high for me. i had tried to read some historical christian fiction since then, but the words fell flat. it was so boring. i didn't even like the main characters. i started randomly skipping over large chunks of text to find some action, something of interest. then i gave up. if i start a book, i give it a chance. but if it doesn't come through for me, it's game over. if i don't feel frustrated that i'll never know the ending, then that book wasn't worth my time.

but then i read the circle trilogy. these books are a whole new story, with twists that you really don't see coming. this is the description on the back of "black":

Enter an adrenaline-laced epic where dreams and reality collide. Fleeing his assailants through deserted alleyways, Thomas Hunter narrowly escapes to the roof of a building. Then a silent bullet from the night clips his head...and his world goes black. From the blackness comes an amazing reality of another world-a world where evil is contained. A world where Thomas Hunter is in love with a beautiful woman. Then he remembers the dream of the chase as he reaches to touch the blood on his head. Where does the dream end and reality begin? Every time he falls asleep in one world, he awakes in the other-both facing catastrophic disaster. Thomas is being pushed beyond his limits...even beyond the limits of space and time. Black is an incredible story of evil and rescue, betrayal and love, pursuit and death, and a terrorist's threat unlike anything the human race has ever known. Some say the world hangs in the balance of every choice we make. Now the fate of two worlds hangs in the balance of one man's choice.

if you like adventure, if you like action, if you like fiction novels at all, you should read this. the action just doesn't ever stop.
if you like romance, you should read this. if you don't like romance, you definitely still should - first of all, keep in mind that male authors write romance in a totally different way. and the romance in these novels is so much deeper than the cotton-candy romance of karen kingsbury. it's hardly about the romance between a man and a woman, but between God and his creation, Christ and his Bride. His passion for us is exhilarating, it's contagious. He's giddy, he's so in love with his people. it's exciting how much God loves me. how much he loves you.

our main guy also finds himself in another world where things, which in our world are considered spiritual or figurative, are quite physical - sinfulness, forgiveness, love. the people in "red" and "white" live with a physical, painful, disgusting disease and accept it as normal. this series has really affected the way i see life around me. when i met our atheist neighbour the other day, i was somewhat taken aback. not by anything physical that she said or did or even looked like, but as this portrayal of sin was so fresh in my mind, i saw her as a woman with a bitterness towards God that oozed its stench, manifesting its undeniable self as rotting flesh, such a disgusting disease that has robbed her of Life and Love. it was palpable in the air, this spiritual disease.

i see christianity in a refreshing light. what a creative portrayal of God - father, son and holy spirit. i understand it a bit more in the way that the jews of the new testament must have. for the jews at the time, life was the way it was, making sacrifices to God and hating gentiles, then someone comes along preaching peace... and treason and blasphemy. how does this fit in with what i believe about God?

oh i shouldn't tell you anymore than that! check out an online preview here. or just go to the library and try the first book!