House - Peretti and Dekker
I was introduced to Frank Peretti as an author back in college (thanks, Chris!) and LOVED his trilogy "This Present Darkness" and "Piercing the Darkness" and "Prophet". Last Spring I happened upon his books again, including one I bought for LM (which he thoroughly enjoyed as I recall, but I can't remember what book it was.) Recently, I stumbled across some novels he has written in collaboration with Ted Dekker and found two at my local library. I started with "House".
Boy am I glad I didn't spend money on this book.
It's a simple salvation plot drowning in unremarkable dialogue and a never-ending and never-riveting chase. Peretti and Dekker stage this novel in a mysteriously haunted house. The characters are unwittingly lulled into the home and then trapped there against demons real, imagined, external and internal. The house continually shifts and changes creating an ongoing maze for the characters within. The novel takes so much time explaining the changes (which were difficult for me to visually imagine anyway, so I started skipping those parts). There were few characters if any that seemed worth redeeming so it was difficult to even wish for their salvation (I know, I'm cruel).
The book was written so simply it felt insulting to an adult reader and yet the plot was certainly not for a child. I had intended to pass the book along to LM when I finished but it was an easy decision not to when all was said and done.
If the authors are trying to captivate a non-Christian audience and demonstrate the gift of salvation through their plot I would suspect they turned a lot of readers off long before they could even get to it. If they are assuming a Christian audience, then the plot was so transparent as to not be the driving force behind reading, and yet the dialogue and character development was so weak it was hard to tough it out through the end.
All this is to say I'm remarkably disappointed. I brought home "Saint" by the same two authors but now I have little desire to open it. I suspect there are a lot of people who do enjoy these novels, as there are several written by these two, so perhaps they get better. I still highly recommend Peretti's other novels, but would not suggest you add this one to your list.
Boy am I glad I didn't spend money on this book.
It's a simple salvation plot drowning in unremarkable dialogue and a never-ending and never-riveting chase. Peretti and Dekker stage this novel in a mysteriously haunted house. The characters are unwittingly lulled into the home and then trapped there against demons real, imagined, external and internal. The house continually shifts and changes creating an ongoing maze for the characters within. The novel takes so much time explaining the changes (which were difficult for me to visually imagine anyway, so I started skipping those parts). There were few characters if any that seemed worth redeeming so it was difficult to even wish for their salvation (I know, I'm cruel).
The book was written so simply it felt insulting to an adult reader and yet the plot was certainly not for a child. I had intended to pass the book along to LM when I finished but it was an easy decision not to when all was said and done.
If the authors are trying to captivate a non-Christian audience and demonstrate the gift of salvation through their plot I would suspect they turned a lot of readers off long before they could even get to it. If they are assuming a Christian audience, then the plot was so transparent as to not be the driving force behind reading, and yet the dialogue and character development was so weak it was hard to tough it out through the end.
All this is to say I'm remarkably disappointed. I brought home "Saint" by the same two authors but now I have little desire to open it. I suspect there are a lot of people who do enjoy these novels, as there are several written by these two, so perhaps they get better. I still highly recommend Peretti's other novels, but would not suggest you add this one to your list.
Comments