Book description from Book Bub:
“The year is 2038 and Cheyenne Burne is a brilliant young programmer working for Acatour, the world’s top technology firm. Her father converts to Christianity, and he suddenly disappears without a trace. When a stranger hands Cheyenne a coded message that sends her on a collision course with a clandestine group of believers, she must put her life in the hands of those following a man known only as the Reckoner. He claims he wants to bring back true faith in Christ to America and also reveal the forces behind the disappearances of the many renowned people who publicly declared their Christian faith.
Operating in the shadows and living off the grid, this mysterious prophet assembles a ragtag team–including a former bookseller whose store was shut down for selling prohibited books–to help him take the battle for transparency to the top. With a ruthless FBI agent closing in, can Cheyenne and the others expose the truth and lead a return to God in America before it’s too late?”
My Review:
This is a challenging book on many levels. It’s taken me a little while to decide how I wanted to review this book as there’s several different ways I could take. I’m going to focus on the story itself and not debate in this review anything about the author’s theological view of end time events. I’m also going to share how it challenged me personally.
We see this story unfold through the eyes of three main characters: Cheyenne, Dowland, and Will. Cheyenne is an unbeliever who is not antagonist towards Christianity—she just doesn’t understand it. When her dad becomes a believer and then disappears, her main purpose becomes finding her dad. Dowland is an unbeliever who hates everything about Christianity and will do anything that he can to stop it. He’s an agent of the government who has no hesitation about murdering believers as soon as he finds them. Will is a believer whose bookstore was closed down because he sold books with a Christian viewpoint. He’s lost his courage and focus, and is struggling to take care of his family and his marriage. The author does a great job of shifting viewpoints among the three as he takes us through the story.
The most mysterious character in the book, and the one who is driving the story, is The Reckoner. He is a modern day prophet that God is guiding to spread the message of salvation throughout the world. We learn some about his past life, but not enough to fill in all the blanks. To the last chapter of the book, we still don’t learn all we’d like about him.
The setting is the year 2038. It’s hard to imagine the world in this shape. Technology is at it’s height. The author imagines some very interesting technology that I believe could very well come about in some form. That technology is at the core of this storyline and is somewhat disturbing to think about. SInce the Church has been forced to go underground, society is in a sad state. At the highest point of technological development, people are the most wretched.
The heart of the book for me was a discussion between The Reckoner and Will in Chapter 4. In discussing spiritual warfare, The Reckoner asks Will this question: “Do you believe he’s (satan) real? Not a notion or an idea but real and true, a leader of an army of demons?” Then later in that conversation, The Reckoner makes this statement about spiritual warfare: “We are pacifists, not because of some strong belief to be so, but because we don’t have strong beliefs in the first place.”
So, if you are reading this review, are you a pacifist in spiritual warfare? That’s the challenge of this suspenseful and intriguing book. It’s a question that all of us are facing, whether or not we want to acknowledge it.
I’m hoping there’s a sequel to this book. I’d like to see how these characters face their next spiritual battle now that they are awake spiritually.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher. All opinions are my own.