By T.L. Hines
Published by Thomas Nelson
An occult thriller, The Falling Away is the story of a guilt ridden Native American military vet named Dylan Runs Ahead and his downward spiral into drugs, crime and finally a cult disguised as an earth conservation commune called the HIVE. In the HIVE, Dylan quickly realizes he is in over his head and even his psychological abilities of separation can’t save him or his clueless friend from Li the fanatical leader of the cult.
In a parallel plot, a young homeless woman named Quinn with a self-embedding disorder, part of ‘The Falling Away’, has been trained to exorcise demons from the ‘infected’ of the world. At the same time, her greater mission was to ensure that Dylan, a ‘chosen’ did not fall into the hands of the HIVE. Yet once he did, all bets were off.
Fragmented and dark, The Falling Away is a questionable Christian fiction novel. While I understood the authors desire to proselytize that all of our human quirks come from God and are not mistakes or necessarily bad things; the behaviors were disturbing. I found Quinn’s embedding and subsequent (consistent) pressing on the embedded items in order to relieve stress and pressure unfortunate. Where she should have been praying in the name of Christ and calling upon the power of our Lord, Hines has her pressing on embedded metal objects under her skin instead. Yet, she is supposed to be a healer of souls.
While there were elements of Christianity in this book, I would definitely not recommend it to new Christians or any Christian searching for a motivational or inspiring work of hope and faith.
I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
Was there anything in the book pointing away from those behaviors? That is, is the author recommending this behavior or contrasting it with something else, maybe even indirectly? Thanks for the post.
ReplyDeleteThe author did not point away from those behaviors at all and went into quite a bit of detail explaining the psychological causes/effects. I was very surprised by this. Quinn was the embedder and her teacher/trainer in the order of The Fallen had OCD. Dylan had borderline schizophrenia. All of these 'ailments'/dysfunctions were supposedly helpful to them and a gift from God.
ReplyDeleteI personally found it quite odd. I was surprised that Thomas Nelson felt it appropriate to publish as a Christian novel. I kept waiting for everyone to surrender and rely on God but it never happened.