Black - Ted Dekker
Published in a omnibus edition as "The Circle Trilogy" : "Black"; "Red"; "White", by Thomas Nelson: Nashville, Tennessee, 2004.
Black is a number of things: a Christian fantasy/allegory in the vein of Narnia, an action adventure with an Everyman seeking to defeat an evil terrorist organisation, a time travel story... It even contains elements of a superhero origin story!
The book tells the story of Thomas Hunter, an aspiring writer who owes money to the mob and is therefore hiding out with his sister. Yet this is not all that is going on for Thomas. Every time he falls asleep in our world he wakes up in another realm that could be the future, or the past, or a distant planet, but that is also an increasingly clear "Eden" of sorts, where white bat/angels and innocent humans revel in the it relationship with Elyon, the story's depiction of a childlike God. When he falls asleep in that world he wakes up back in ours.
The two worlds begin overlapping to some degree, and Thomas learns from the Eden world that his world will be ravaged by a highly potent virus (a storyline that feels a little more relevant at present!), and seeks to change history. Meanwhile in the Eden world, black bat/angels across the river seek to tempt Thomas (among the other humans) to 'fall'.
The two storylines are both interesting, but not always simultaneously gripping. So at times I found myself wanting to get through the Eden chapters quickly in order to find out more about the virus, whereas at other times the opposite was true. Yet, the book definitely hooked me in. It also ends in a cliffhanger, making me very glad that I had the omnibus edition and could move straight on to book two.
As in any allegory some elements are a bit more on-the-nose than others, but taking that into account the book is a fun read, and at times even caught me up in the emotion of it all.
I'm already working my way through the sequel, which is a good sign.
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