I like "what-if" style fiction, and the idea of a future world needing to rediscover Christianity appealed to me. (The romance elements, not so much, but they were fine and didn't get in my way. Kind of sweet actually.) And it did successfully create a world needing to rediscover Christianity, complete with some rather disturbing fake gods, and underpinned by a combo of actual demonic activity and religion-as-political-power. A world just waiting for Christ to reappear.

On that level, this was great. My main critique is that the characters fall for God ("Deu") a little too hard, a little too fast, and a little too perfectly. They're translating one chapter at a time, from the Old Testament only. But they quickly decide God is very forgiving, and interested in your little prayers, and fall into a house church model. I frequently found myself thinking "Yes, you got that right, but you're behaving too Christian" or "How did you get that from just Genesis 1-3 and a couple Psalms (which is all that has been translated so far)?". The author needed to slow down the character development and/or speed up the translation to make it more believable. ( )

I am a Christian, so I am biased.

good premise, but poor execution. Many of the supporting details that fleshed out the storyline were predictable and clichéd. The characters were stereotyped.

There were some aspects that were frustratingly unrealistic, such as the girl's incredibly mature faith from only reading the first 3 chapters of Genesis and a few psalms, after a lifetime immersed in another religion. This can be excused, because I understand that the author is attempting to show God's nature to potential unsaved readers. still, it detracted from the enjoyment for me.

the author did an admirable job of attempting to show character development and the progression from atheist to believer for one of the characters.
the Lord works in mysterious ways, and I think it is inherently dangerous when we try to invent stories of His work out of our own imaginations. We could very easily draw a false picture of Him to any unsaved people who are actually curious. I realize that it's just a novel, but I still would not feel comfortable recommending this book to a nonbeliever, in hopes that it will pique interest about God. I would rather give him/her a true history of something God has actually done, rather than a fiction. ( )

Long, took a long time to get going. Once it got going I really enjoyed it. ( )

Interesting concept idea for the storyline, but for me, I could not get into the story and stopped after part 1. I couldn't put a finger on why I didn't want to continue reading it--I guess I didn't bond with the characters and at first, it seemed rather ordinary plotting. ( )

When I started the book, I really didn't expect to get as hooked in as I would become. After all, the first half is really a string of Fantasy conventions, only written even more obviously than normal. For instance, we are used to the hero of the book being both stronger than the average guy and smarter, but this one is not only the greatest warrior in the kingdom, but he is also a college professor in his free time.

I couldn't help but grimace at that one.

But after about the first half, the author starts getting his bearing in this story and begins to take it in really interesting directions. I was very intrigued by his handling of early heresy within the infant church. He clearly takes care in trying to figure out what sort of theology a group would have when they could only read a few psalms and part of Genesis, and while I thought some of the characters just proved too insightful (spouting some pretty advanced theology on their first reading of Genesis 1), I was impressed by the effort put here.

In the end, I am very much looking forward to the next parts of the trilogy with the hopes that the author will continue to be as thoughtful and careful as he is in the second half of this one. ( )