Do you like action? Adventure? Romance? Supernaturalism? Awesomeness? Immanuel's Veins by Ted Dekker has a perfect blend of everything, and to top it all, it's historical fiction (one of my personal favorite genres).
It's a story of love, and a story of hate. The story follows a Russian warrior named Toma Nicolescu in 1772, AD, who works specifically for Catherine the Great, empress of Russia. Toma was assigned with his best friend to guard and protect the royal family of Moldavia, but not everything goes as plan. Strange occurrences happen, and Toma is suddenly thrown into the impossible world of the supernatural. Things happen that shouldn't, people die and come back to life, and he's stuck in the middle of it all. He will have to put his soul to the test if he is to defeat the evil and save those whom he loves.
This is a story of heroism, betrayal, and sacrifice. I know I said something similar about an earlier review, The Silver Branch (by Rosemary Sutcliff), but this time I mean it in a stronger way. This book grabs your soul and shakes it, and in the end it helps you remember just how powerful and awesome our God is.
But I must warn you, this book is officially rated PG-13 by the author. I would not exactly call it family friendly. As has been said of this book:
This book is for everyone, but not everyone is for this book.
If you love supernatural stories that rattle the soul, but still shows us the greatness of God, I'd recommend this novel. It is one of the best books I have read in my life.
~Reuben/Arkatox~
P.S. Happy Thanksgiving!
I haven’t read a lot of Ted Dekker before and I would have to say that Immanuel’s Veins was the best book that I didn’t like.
ReplyDeleteThe writing is really quite superb: descriptive language, active plot, interesting characters all worked together. It was just all the lust, blood, and even more blood that just smothered me.
I wrote a review of this book on my own blog at www.tracysbooknook.com
-Tracy