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celeste57 's review for:
Piercing the Darkness
by Frank E. Peretti
dark
hopeful
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Whereas This Present Darkness has lived vibrantly in my imagination for the last two decades, I remembered next to nothing about Piercing the Darkness. So I knew that, after finishing my first reread of This Present Darkness in close to twenty years, I definitely needed to revisit the sequel. I recalled just enough about this book to assure myself that I had in fact read it before, but that was it. I was immediately swept up in the legal thriller, courtroom drama aspect of the story, though that’s not my usual genre of choice. While this book hasn’t had quite the staying power for me as its predecessor, Piercing the Darkness is just as intense and propulsive, with even higher stakes.
Our story begins with a botched murder attempt. Sally Beth Roe is supposed to have “committed suicide,” but she somehow manages to kill her assassin instead. She has no idea why she’s been targeted, but she is determined to dig into her own memories while she’s on the road in hopes of finding out. In the same town, the headmaster of a small Christian school has just had his children ripped from him by Child Protective Services, and is immediately thereafter sued by a parent from the school for child abuse—namely, for trying to cast a demon out of this parent’s ten-year old daughter. But the little girl really does have a demon. And that demon is why Sally Roe is now on the run for her life. As the story ratchets up in tension, we see how these two stories are connected, and how they are merely the surface ripples of a much larger, cosmic battle brewing beneath their surface. But if the Christians in the area can’t stop fighting and gossiping for long enough to come together in prayer, they and the angels working behind the scenes will have little hope of piercing the darkness surrounding them.
As I stated above, I’m not the biggest fan of legal thrillers. That might be why I remembered so little about this book. But I enjoyed the story far more than I expected. I shouldn’t have doubted Peretti. Over the past few months, I’ve fallen in love with his storytelling all over again. I will say that Piercing the Darkness, while incredibly engaging and filled with even higher stakes, doesn’t seem quite as strong a story to me. For one thing, it throws all attempts at subtlety to the wind. There is more straight-up Satanism here. It’s heavier handed in terms of the spiritual warfare, and some of the demonic dialogue is cheesy. It’s just a bit over-the-top in comparison to This Present Darkness. But the pacing is so excellent, and the tension so propulsive, that I can’t really hold those elements against it. This book houses an incredible story. And if there are a slight few missteps along the way, that story and the message it houses more that make up for them.
And even though I found a few of these spiritual elements cheesy, another spiritual element was my favorite scene the entire book. And that scene is Sally Roe’s conversion. She has fought mightily to reach that point. She has asked hard questions of herself and the God she once refused to believe even existed. She has faced horrendous truths about her past and her own decisions. So this conversion, and the treatment of it in the spiritual realm, feels like an earned culmination. Her prayer in the physical realm, and the spiritual view of the moment she gave her heart to Christ, were a beautiful duet. The angels rejoicing over—and the demons raging against—the redemption of a solitary person was powerfully portrayed. I just really loved that scene.
While not the lifetime favorite This Present Darkness will always be for me, I still thoroughly enjoyed Piercing the Darkness. Once I picked it up, I had a hard time putting it down, and read it every spare moment I had. I highly recommend this duology!
Our story begins with a botched murder attempt. Sally Beth Roe is supposed to have “committed suicide,” but she somehow manages to kill her assassin instead. She has no idea why she’s been targeted, but she is determined to dig into her own memories while she’s on the road in hopes of finding out. In the same town, the headmaster of a small Christian school has just had his children ripped from him by Child Protective Services, and is immediately thereafter sued by a parent from the school for child abuse—namely, for trying to cast a demon out of this parent’s ten-year old daughter. But the little girl really does have a demon. And that demon is why Sally Roe is now on the run for her life. As the story ratchets up in tension, we see how these two stories are connected, and how they are merely the surface ripples of a much larger, cosmic battle brewing beneath their surface. But if the Christians in the area can’t stop fighting and gossiping for long enough to come together in prayer, they and the angels working behind the scenes will have little hope of piercing the darkness surrounding them.
As I stated above, I’m not the biggest fan of legal thrillers. That might be why I remembered so little about this book. But I enjoyed the story far more than I expected. I shouldn’t have doubted Peretti. Over the past few months, I’ve fallen in love with his storytelling all over again. I will say that Piercing the Darkness, while incredibly engaging and filled with even higher stakes, doesn’t seem quite as strong a story to me. For one thing, it throws all attempts at subtlety to the wind. There is more straight-up Satanism here. It’s heavier handed in terms of the spiritual warfare, and some of the demonic dialogue is cheesy. It’s just a bit over-the-top in comparison to This Present Darkness. But the pacing is so excellent, and the tension so propulsive, that I can’t really hold those elements against it. This book houses an incredible story. And if there are a slight few missteps along the way, that story and the message it houses more that make up for them.
And even though I found a few of these spiritual elements cheesy, another spiritual element was my favorite scene the entire book. And that scene is Sally Roe’s conversion. She has fought mightily to reach that point. She has asked hard questions of herself and the God she once refused to believe even existed. She has faced horrendous truths about her past and her own decisions. So this conversion, and the treatment of it in the spiritual realm, feels like an earned culmination. Her prayer in the physical realm, and the spiritual view of the moment she gave her heart to Christ, were a beautiful duet. The angels rejoicing over—and the demons raging against—the redemption of a solitary person was powerfully portrayed. I just really loved that scene.
While not the lifetime favorite This Present Darkness will always be for me, I still thoroughly enjoyed Piercing the Darkness. Once I picked it up, I had a hard time putting it down, and read it every spare moment I had. I highly recommend this duology!