This is such a great read!
Wendy Alec has taken an extremely difficult subject for her first novel and made it exciting, illuminating and thought provoking. Her writing style is easy to read and very morish.
I read this novel in a day, which wasn’t my intention, I just found myself reading another chapter, then another and another… One of the things that made this possible is the short chapters allowing the reader to read just one more…
After the huge disappointment of the Left Behind series by Jerry B Jenkins and Tim LaHaye, I have been left somewhat jaded in my view of Christian fiction. I did find that series to be elitist, partisan and somewhat morally dubious. None of these failings can be said of the Fall Of Lucifer. Wendy Alec is a humble person by nature and this comes through in her sensitive and mature writing style.
I did find the first couple of chapters a little repetitious mainly in descriptive passages about the First Heaven; but on reflection, given the subject matter and how truly impossible it is for us to imagine, it is both forgivable and completely understandable. As a writer myself, I don’t see how she could’ve done better. I certainly wouldn’t even attempt a novel like this. It is quite obviously a work of imagination, biblical knowledge and revelation. I’m not sure that anyone else could have pulled it.
As I intimated earlier in this review, I’m not a huge fan of Christian fiction. I read mainly secular novels and got so fed up with the Left Behind series that I honestly thought I wouldn’t read another Christian novel (I read the first 11 and gave up half way through the final one – so you can imagine just how fed up with it I was). It seemed to me that non-Christians were doing a better job of writing about Christian themes (Stephen King, The Stand. for example).
But the theme of Lucifer’s fall was so intriguing to me that I couldn’t resist, and thank God I didn’t. I’m so glad that Wendy didn’t write some caricature of Lucifer cackling and rubbing his hands together. That was a trap that Jerry Jenkins fell into with the Left Behind books making the Antichrist a stereotype of some cartoon villain. Wendy Alec shows great maturity and a firm grip of scripture in this novel, not to mention a great understanding of the character of God.
I do have a question for those who have read this marvellous novel, however: Did you sympathise with Lucifer? There he is, Prince Regent, Yehovah’s Viceroy and adored of Heaven; then he hears about God’s plan to create a new race, a race of men with God’s own genetic code. Mankind would not be Angelic; they would have the ability to replicate and multiply and would supplant the Angelic Host. Angels were not sufficient for God’s need for fellowship.
I think that’s where this book scores for me. Wendy Alec came to it with understanding and respect.
I can’t wait for the second in the Chronicles of Brothers: Messiah next October (2006).
The Fall Of Lucifer is a very worthy novel, well written, exciting, vast in scope and extremely enjoyable. To use a literary cliché, I couldn’t put it down.
Congratulations to Wendy. Long may she continue to enthral a readership that (I believe) will grow and grow.