Ted Dekker, Green

Thanks to Thomas Nelson and their BRB program for the review copy. Ted Dekker's Green is the fourth book in his Circle series. It takes place a few decades after the earlier three books, but is mean to serve both as end to the four-book series and as a starting point. I come at it without having read the other books in the series, though they have come highly recommended to me by a number of friends. So my review is specifically on how this book introduces the action and plot, and does not deal with how it fits with and completes the remaining books.

Dekker's overall scheme is an interesting one, in which Thomas Hunter finds himself straddling two worlds, or more properly two distant time periods in the same world. One is current-day Earth, the other is two millenia later. And although the two periods are distant, they are intimately related, with events in one seemingly connected with events in the other. The key contrast is a spiritual one: in the current-day setting, spiritual realities are mostly hidden from view, as we experience them, where as in the distant future, these realities are evident in a more visible and tangible way. In Green Thomas is propelled back into the past in a quest to save his son and try stop a rising tide of war. Teeleh, the great evil monster, is making a play for power and is striving to unravel the Circle (Thomas's band of regenerates, known as Albinos) from within by driving them to war. The end is looming, an end of destruction or deliverance, and Thomas cries out for Elyon's help as he leaps back and forth between worlds in a fight against time and evil.

Dekker's imaginative world is an interesting one, and his action certainly takes place on a grand scheme. But this book, at least as an introduction to the Circle series, suffers from too much complication. It is difficult to grasp the premise and follow the complex action. There are too many characters and the premise is just too complex to be introduced in this way, where the basic story is almost presumed and only slowly revealed along the way as Thomas proceeds on his frantic quest. It may be a more fitting climax to the series, but I leave that to other reviwers to decide. There are some interesting sequences, some meaningful reflection on questions of violence and nonviolence and on the relation of the physical to the spiritual realm, but these all buckle under the weight of too much premise in this book.