Faith Awakened is a science-fiction story by Grace Bridges. It involves an artificial plague unleashed in a future world dominated by a single, evil government. There's also a fair amount of virtual reality, too, which is one of my main quibbles.
As far as the writing goes, there is certainly no problem: the story flows well, and the characters are well-handled. On the whole, I had no major "Wait a minute..." reactions, except to the idea that a small Irish town would contain a top-secret device that gets the main plot rolling. (And even then, who knows what kind of odd tricks a secretive, paranoid one-world government might get up to? Hiding things in out-of-the-way places isn't that improbable.)
The writer is passionate about God and ministry, which is refreshing after a lot of "wink-wink, nudge-nudge" Christian fiction. Even non-Christians will probably appreciate something forthright. (And no, there isn't any "preaching" in the sense of protracted religious exposition.) It's a good read, four out of five, I'd say, and fairly quick. (It's also a free download if you don't mind e-books, so get off your duff, already!)
To sum up the kinds of things that some people always ask about: no profanity or violence, no drug use, a certain amount of gore (the plague's a modified ebola virus, so it isn't pretty), a brief, non-graphic reference to off-camera extra-marital sex (and its consequences), ditto for married sex. Not even a one on my personal kinkometer, though.
More positively, there are some good theological points here, but I'm not going to identify them because you need to read the book yourself.
Downsides? I suppose someone will grouch because her one-world government isn't properly apocalyptic, though I'm not sure that the Antichrist (yes, I do take him to be a literal, future person) will be the first to gain global control, though I doubt anyone will retain it for long. (Based on some passages in Daniel, I'm not sure the Antichrist has political control over everything anyway; he just manages to get his way in general.) So this seems to me relatively minor.
There is an important issue--again, not fatal, just annoying to me. I'll cover that next.
1 comment:
Thanks Steve, I appreciate the thought you've put into this. I had to laugh at your "kinkometer"... As to being forthright, I think that's changing a lot at the moment, so look for something a little different soon (I hope!) Catch you later :)
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