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3.88 AVERAGE
3.88 AVERAGE
This was part of a three book projects I gave myself to understand the horror genre.
Nothing more terrifying than demons, right?
Frank Peretti combines mystery, conspiracy theory, faith, and the power of prayer into a battle for a small town.
He does a good job of establishing who to root for.
On top of that, he connects the New Age, Occultism, Witchcraft, and Mystery religions in such a way as to be unapologetically polarizing. I like that. Hardly anyone has the balls to be polarizing anymore, especially while taking a pro-Christian stance. And at the same time, he does so while communicating nothing but love for all human beings - God hates the sin, not the sinner.
Hollywood will never make This Present Darkness. That's the very reason I'd like to see this made into a film, and if somehow given the chance, I'd consider doing so myself.
There were only a few things I didn't like:
1. The battles seemed horrifically one-sided. Sometimes the angels win only because people are praying. This means that the demons are making inroads based on the merits of their own skills and abilities, and as a result come off as more admirable. I don't think that was the author's intention. A better move is to structure the battles so that prayer does help, but it doesn't cheapen the struggle of heroe we are rooting for.
2. He gives the second most powerful bad guy the awesomest sounding name - Rafar. Then he gives the most powerful bad guy the dumbest name 'The Strongman'. The confrontation with the Strongman is horribly anti-climactic, but makes sense from a story perspective. It happened that way to complete the pastor's story arc and give him a climactic moment, so it's forgivable.
3. The third thing is the narrative style. Frank will often insert responses to what comes next. A bad example is something like. "You'll never believe what happens next." or 'Oh no!'. The result is a John-Maddening effect on the storytelling. Just let the events speak for themselves and let the reader decide whether the moment merits an 'oh-no'. Sometimes i wanted to feel different about what was happening than the writer intended for no other reason than that he was narrating my supposed reaction for me.
If you can get past the occasional narrative gaff (only in my opinion), you'll not only get an entertaining story - you'll gain an understanding of the role you have to play in a very real battle happening around you daily. Become a prayer warrior now!
Nothing more terrifying than demons, right?
Frank Peretti combines mystery, conspiracy theory, faith, and the power of prayer into a battle for a small town.
He does a good job of establishing who to root for.
On top of that, he connects the New Age, Occultism, Witchcraft, and Mystery religions in such a way as to be unapologetically polarizing. I like that. Hardly anyone has the balls to be polarizing anymore, especially while taking a pro-Christian stance. And at the same time, he does so while communicating nothing but love for all human beings - God hates the sin, not the sinner.
Hollywood will never make This Present Darkness. That's the very reason I'd like to see this made into a film, and if somehow given the chance, I'd consider doing so myself.
There were only a few things I didn't like:
1. The battles seemed horrifically one-sided. Sometimes the angels win only because people are praying. This means that the demons are making inroads based on the merits of their own skills and abilities, and as a result come off as more admirable. I don't think that was the author's intention. A better move is to structure the battles so that prayer does help, but it doesn't cheapen the struggle of heroe we are rooting for.
2. He gives the second most powerful bad guy the awesomest sounding name - Rafar. Then he gives the most powerful bad guy the dumbest name 'The Strongman'. The confrontation with the Strongman is horribly anti-climactic, but makes sense from a story perspective. It happened that way to complete the pastor's story arc and give him a climactic moment, so it's forgivable.
3. The third thing is the narrative style. Frank will often insert responses to what comes next. A bad example is something like. "You'll never believe what happens next." or 'Oh no!'. The result is a John-Maddening effect on the storytelling. Just let the events speak for themselves and let the reader decide whether the moment merits an 'oh-no'. Sometimes i wanted to feel different about what was happening than the writer intended for no other reason than that he was narrating my supposed reaction for me.
If you can get past the occasional narrative gaff (only in my opinion), you'll not only get an entertaining story - you'll gain an understanding of the role you have to play in a very real battle happening around you daily. Become a prayer warrior now!
As long as you appreciate that This Present Darkness is Christian fiction from the start, there shouldn't much trouble accepting certain premises: the universal consciousness is a deceit, temptations manifest themselves as minor demons, angels rely on the power of prayer as much as mankind. It's from this foundation that Peretti portrays a large scale conspiracy brought on by higher demons, and the unseen heavenly actions of God's angels to stop it.
In some ways, This Present Darkness is really two stories superimposed onto each other, with one more grounded in the physical and the other in the spiritual. One dimension centers on the takeover of the small college town of Ashton by an international corporation with ties to a new age foundation, with only the resolve of a newspaper investigation and small town church to stop it. The other reveals the unseen players behind this conspiracy: demons with plans to manipulate and supplant anyone who stands in their way; angels who provide cover for a few struggling protagonists until they can rally enough evidence to expose the plot or muster enough support through prayer.
Peretti employs a classic plot curve to the tell the story, building conflict at a rapidly increasing pace until it reaches its climax. While the characters are mostly typecast as good and evil from the start, the protagonists are generally likable. You want them to win. You're not sure if they will. In the process, Peretti provides a thriller that will entertain but also a means to pose some though-provoking ideas about temptation, faith, prayer, and spiritual warfare.
In some ways, This Present Darkness is really two stories superimposed onto each other, with one more grounded in the physical and the other in the spiritual. One dimension centers on the takeover of the small college town of Ashton by an international corporation with ties to a new age foundation, with only the resolve of a newspaper investigation and small town church to stop it. The other reveals the unseen players behind this conspiracy: demons with plans to manipulate and supplant anyone who stands in their way; angels who provide cover for a few struggling protagonists until they can rally enough evidence to expose the plot or muster enough support through prayer.
Peretti employs a classic plot curve to the tell the story, building conflict at a rapidly increasing pace until it reaches its climax. While the characters are mostly typecast as good and evil from the start, the protagonists are generally likable. You want them to win. You're not sure if they will. In the process, Peretti provides a thriller that will entertain but also a means to pose some though-provoking ideas about temptation, faith, prayer, and spiritual warfare.
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
dark
hopeful
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I had seen This Present Darkness at several of the used book sales that my local library had hosted. I had heard about its reputation as a bestselling Christian fiction many times. My husband credits it as one of the best books that he read in his teens, so with a 33 cent library book sale price tag, I ended up adding This Present Darkness to my collection.
The book sat on my shelves, unloved and neglected for about six months, and then I started working through a reading challenge, and one of the first books on the reading challenge was to read a book “recommended by your best friend.” My husband qualifies as one of my best friends, so I picked up the book and began to read. I shot a picture of the cover of the book and shared it on social media, only to have at least five of my friends tell me that it was one of the best books that they had ever read. With those kind of recommendations, I got started.
Ashton is a small town. A typical small town with a small college, a little newspaper and a few little churches. I would imagine it quite similar to the small town that I live in. However, at a carnival, a reporter gets arrested on a made up charge in order to have some film confiscated and destroyed. This act piques the curiosity of the editor of the paper so much that he begins getting involved in asking the kind of questions that might have him railroaded out of town or worse.
Hank Busche is the pastor of a small church. He preaches the word with vigor and lives it out in his life. His congregants don’t seem to appreciate it, and his hold on his church is precarious. However, he can’t stop praying for them, and soon his faith begins to inspire a revival of prayer among the remnant of the town. This revival begins to grow, and Busche soon realizes that there are evil demonic forces in the town the the must be ready to battle against.
In the background, there are demons with plots to take over the town and an angelic host trying to quietly battle these demons. As they do, the lines between good and evil, demonic and angelic become drawn and the battle will soon commence over whether or not this town will fall to the satanic forces.
I don’t really know where to start with this review. There are a lot of things I really enjoyed about the book, and there are still other things that I didn’t enjoy and thought poorly of as I read. I think my younger self would have really enjoyed and got into this book. There was a time when I was really interested in angels and demons, and I find that, as I get older, it’s not as big a focus of my life. I believe they are there, and I believe that they work powerfully, but I don’t know that their workings are truly meant to be a consideration of my life beyond the reminder of who and what the real enemy is.
My battle is a spiritual battle, but so much of my life is tied into battling the enemy inside of me that I have that struggle as my forefront at this stage in my life. Realizing just how sinful I am has meant to me that my own flesh is my true battle assignment. As a younger person, I would have enjoyed this book more as a spiritual battle because my own sin didn’t loom so large in my life, and I would often feel as if I was being attacked by Satanic forces. I still do occasionally, but I find that far more often I see people’s struggle with their own flesh and sin and my own struggle with it as the hugest factor of conflict in my life. Ultimately, that is an attack of the devil, but it’s not quite the type of attack pictured in this book. Even the angels acknowledge this part of the spiritual battle as they ponder whether or not one of the main characters will be destroyed by his own temptation to sin. They say, “No. Not destroyed. Knocked down, perhaps. Decimated, perhaps. But it’s all because of the dross in his own soul, which the Spirit of God has yet to convict him of. We can do nothing but wait and let all things take their course.”
I enjoyed places where Peretti specifically named demons and their powers. That seemed very much like an excellent allegorical use for naming sins and the way that those “demons” surround us. I’m not convinced that every thing is a demon, so literally, I wouldn’t be interested in it, but as an allegory, I would. However, I’m pretty sure that Peretti does not mean for this naming to be allegorical, so I think we’re at cross-purposes here.
I enjoyed the storyline quite well. I wasn’t crazy about Peretti’s writing or writing style. It wasn’t really me, and sometimes I struggled to stay in the book because of that. I also see that the book was written during the height of the new age movement, and as someone who, as a teen, was attracted to elements of that movement, I’m not really buying the shadowy “universal consciousness” as a bad guy. It just doesn’t seem realistic with my understanding of the new age movement. I also think this dates the book a little bit as the current trend is less towards spirituality in general and more towards hedonism and atheism as a rejection of spiritual things.
One of the things that I did love was that, in the end, to accomplish God’s plan, both of the protagonists had to experience a fall. Sometimes we are attempting to do God’s will for us, and it seems to make life worse, and one of God’s main messages to me over the past little bit has been that the difficulties of life and the struggles that I have are not necessarily an indicator that I am not in his will. Even when I have done what God has told me to do and what God has led me to, there are times when God has ordained a dark patch and a rough spot for me. I needed to see both Busche and Hogan go through the darkness. That’s the lesson God has impressed upon me lately, and I feel like the dark places are sometimes the best places to see God working.
However, after that, I had expectations for how God alone was going to be pull them out. So, I hated in the end, feeling like much of the victory was because one of the demons was jealous of the other one and caused dissension. I wanted to see God’s glory. I wanted it to be clear rout where the demons were destroyed utterly by his power. I felt kind of cheated out of a good ending. Not to mention that there was so much back-and-forth between the demon/angel world and the physical people world in the last fifty pages of the book that is was kind of confusing. I found myself going back and rereading portions to get a better understanding of what was happening.
I don’t mean to sound so negative as I write about this book either. I hate to say that I’m not a fan of a book that has changed so many lives and that so many people I am friends with think so highly of. However, I’m just not a fan. There are really good portions to the storyline too, but in the end, this book just doesn’t live up to my expectations of such a huge seller and something that so many have found to be life-changing. Maybe if I had read it in another stage of my life, I would have found it to be just as wonderful as all the hype, but my opinion is that this book is just not really for me.
The book sat on my shelves, unloved and neglected for about six months, and then I started working through a reading challenge, and one of the first books on the reading challenge was to read a book “recommended by your best friend.” My husband qualifies as one of my best friends, so I picked up the book and began to read. I shot a picture of the cover of the book and shared it on social media, only to have at least five of my friends tell me that it was one of the best books that they had ever read. With those kind of recommendations, I got started.
Ashton is a small town. A typical small town with a small college, a little newspaper and a few little churches. I would imagine it quite similar to the small town that I live in. However, at a carnival, a reporter gets arrested on a made up charge in order to have some film confiscated and destroyed. This act piques the curiosity of the editor of the paper so much that he begins getting involved in asking the kind of questions that might have him railroaded out of town or worse.
Hank Busche is the pastor of a small church. He preaches the word with vigor and lives it out in his life. His congregants don’t seem to appreciate it, and his hold on his church is precarious. However, he can’t stop praying for them, and soon his faith begins to inspire a revival of prayer among the remnant of the town. This revival begins to grow, and Busche soon realizes that there are evil demonic forces in the town the the must be ready to battle against.
In the background, there are demons with plots to take over the town and an angelic host trying to quietly battle these demons. As they do, the lines between good and evil, demonic and angelic become drawn and the battle will soon commence over whether or not this town will fall to the satanic forces.
I don’t really know where to start with this review. There are a lot of things I really enjoyed about the book, and there are still other things that I didn’t enjoy and thought poorly of as I read. I think my younger self would have really enjoyed and got into this book. There was a time when I was really interested in angels and demons, and I find that, as I get older, it’s not as big a focus of my life. I believe they are there, and I believe that they work powerfully, but I don’t know that their workings are truly meant to be a consideration of my life beyond the reminder of who and what the real enemy is.
My battle is a spiritual battle, but so much of my life is tied into battling the enemy inside of me that I have that struggle as my forefront at this stage in my life. Realizing just how sinful I am has meant to me that my own flesh is my true battle assignment. As a younger person, I would have enjoyed this book more as a spiritual battle because my own sin didn’t loom so large in my life, and I would often feel as if I was being attacked by Satanic forces. I still do occasionally, but I find that far more often I see people’s struggle with their own flesh and sin and my own struggle with it as the hugest factor of conflict in my life. Ultimately, that is an attack of the devil, but it’s not quite the type of attack pictured in this book. Even the angels acknowledge this part of the spiritual battle as they ponder whether or not one of the main characters will be destroyed by his own temptation to sin. They say, “No. Not destroyed. Knocked down, perhaps. Decimated, perhaps. But it’s all because of the dross in his own soul, which the Spirit of God has yet to convict him of. We can do nothing but wait and let all things take their course.”
I enjoyed places where Peretti specifically named demons and their powers. That seemed very much like an excellent allegorical use for naming sins and the way that those “demons” surround us. I’m not convinced that every thing is a demon, so literally, I wouldn’t be interested in it, but as an allegory, I would. However, I’m pretty sure that Peretti does not mean for this naming to be allegorical, so I think we’re at cross-purposes here.
I enjoyed the storyline quite well. I wasn’t crazy about Peretti’s writing or writing style. It wasn’t really me, and sometimes I struggled to stay in the book because of that. I also see that the book was written during the height of the new age movement, and as someone who, as a teen, was attracted to elements of that movement, I’m not really buying the shadowy “universal consciousness” as a bad guy. It just doesn’t seem realistic with my understanding of the new age movement. I also think this dates the book a little bit as the current trend is less towards spirituality in general and more towards hedonism and atheism as a rejection of spiritual things.
One of the things that I did love was that, in the end, to accomplish God’s plan, both of the protagonists had to experience a fall. Sometimes we are attempting to do God’s will for us, and it seems to make life worse, and one of God’s main messages to me over the past little bit has been that the difficulties of life and the struggles that I have are not necessarily an indicator that I am not in his will. Even when I have done what God has told me to do and what God has led me to, there are times when God has ordained a dark patch and a rough spot for me. I needed to see both Busche and Hogan go through the darkness. That’s the lesson God has impressed upon me lately, and I feel like the dark places are sometimes the best places to see God working.
However, after that, I had expectations for how God alone was going to be pull them out. So, I hated in the end, feeling like much of the victory was because one of the demons was jealous of the other one and caused dissension. I wanted to see God’s glory. I wanted it to be clear rout where the demons were destroyed utterly by his power. I felt kind of cheated out of a good ending. Not to mention that there was so much back-and-forth between the demon/angel world and the physical people world in the last fifty pages of the book that is was kind of confusing. I found myself going back and rereading portions to get a better understanding of what was happening.
I don’t mean to sound so negative as I write about this book either. I hate to say that I’m not a fan of a book that has changed so many lives and that so many people I am friends with think so highly of. However, I’m just not a fan. There are really good portions to the storyline too, but in the end, this book just doesn’t live up to my expectations of such a huge seller and something that so many have found to be life-changing. Maybe if I had read it in another stage of my life, I would have found it to be just as wonderful as all the hype, but my opinion is that this book is just not really for me.
dark
hopeful
inspiring
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Moderate: Torture
Read this as a teen and still remember how much I loved it.