The novel's strong suit is it's ability to keep up the suspense throughout the story. It's generally fast-paced and definitely kept me turning the pages. Without this pace, the novel's weaknesses would have been a lot more obvious. Instead, they stayed slightly nagging at the back of my mind until I finished the novel.

While the characters were easy to sympathize with, they each only seemed to have one emotional mode. They did round out into believable humans at the very end, but I would have enjoyed a greater emotional range earlier on.

The world was well-described, but it felt to me like a stage where secondary characters had no life once they left the scene. As an example, the jungle natives were mentioned several times, yet we never saw a single one in all the time we spent roaming around in their territory.

Also, some major story details were left unexplained. For example, Shannon has exceptional hearing and repeatedly hears the attack helicopter coming in the distance. But, at the critical life-or-death moment, he doesn't hear the helicopter until it's at close range and actively shooting at him.

I should mention that I don't think non-Christians would enjoy this book, partly because it contains a lot of theology and partly because God plays a major underlying role in the story.

I also questioned the theology at times. There's a minor character who says that God is playing a chess game with Satan and that the human pieces might not obliging move into their critical position in his plan (which would lose the game) so God's having to manipulate some of the pieces to get them into position. While the other characters don't completely agree with her ideas, I was baffled by such a pagan, non-Biblical theology coming from someone who's implied to be a Godly woman.

In the novel, there was no cussing or sex. There were several supernatural elements (visions from God and demon possession). Overall, I'd rate this novel as good, clean fun.

Genre Reviews
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