La Bene Vita

Book Review-ish: A Voice in the Wind

I'm only in Chapter 2. The book is called "A Voice in the Wind" by Francine Rivers, and a friend "loaned" it to me via Kindle (you can do that now.) She insisted I would love this author, and that this is the first of many books she intends to loan me.

The book has potential, but it feels like the rough draft. What author and editor would allow a published work to announce that "the men were furious and they shouted in fury"? I almost didn't find the potential, because Chapter 1 was so cumbersome. It starts with (one of) the (many) fall(s) of Jerusalem, in which Roman legions take the city from... um... various competing factions including Jews, Christians, zealots, and... uh... some other groups. In the first few pages, we met all these groups and their leaders, and for the life of me, I couldn't keep them straight. When they Jews set fire to their own temple to burn the Romans they'd just lured inside, I couldn't figure out who was inside, who was out, who set it on fire or whose temple it was. It was only later, when we finally met one protagonist, that I understood what had happened. I figured it out right after the part where the protagonist was taken captive by a Roman, into whose head we jumped just as he raised his sword to kill the protagonist, which is lucky - otherwise, I would have never known why he chose to take her captive instead of killing her.

Of course, our protagonist didn't know why he chose to do this. But we knew. Because we jumped into his head.

I intend to keep plugging away; now that I've met both protagonists, one a Christian from Jerusalem, and one a Germanic chieftain leading a rebellion against the Romans, I suspect they are destined to meet, and I'm intrigued. I just think this book needed a once-over by a good editor.