A review by pejms
This Present Darkness by Frank E. Peretti

4.0

All things considered, it’s a fairly complicated thing to create a narrative conflict that exists simultaneously on two completely different strata, with one set of characters that are largely incapable of directly interacting with or even perceiving another set; and yet also the two sets need one another in order to accomplish their goals. Both strata of the narrative also create different tones; the human side draws heavily on mystery and investigative drama, while the supernatural side takes on the air of a war fantasy. The way the war fantasy impacts the investigative drama can create inventive wrinkles in how the drama plays out, yet also prevents the story from being a fully realized mystery; not all the narrative pieces of the mystery are really permitted to fall clearly into place at the end, not everything is given ample foreshadowing owing to the much more straightforward narrative structure of the war fantasy. The dialogue is at times odd, and one half of the narrative conflict essentially loses most of its tension a few chapters before the climax, but overall the story was enjoyable for its complexity and a fair few of its characters.