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Fleeing assailants through deserted alleyways, Thomas Hunter narrowly escapes to the roof of a building. Then a silent bullet from the night clips his head . . . and his world goes black.
Series: The Circle (Book 1)
Genre: Adult Science-Fiction
Publisher: Thomas Nelson; 2 Anv edition (July 27, 2009)
Page Count: 432 pages
In my teens, I read the first three books of the Lost Books series, but for some reason I didn’t finish the series and then I read the Circle Series Graphic Novel, but I don’t think I fully grasped the story at the time. However, Ted Dekker was attending Realm Makers 2017 so I had to read some Ted Dekker! I preordered the Circle series and picked it up at the conference then after getting it signed I started reading it as soon as I got home. After having Ted as a keynote speaker, I really wanted to read some of his work!
The Plot: The premise and storyline were very unique. The story frequently has Thomas fall asleep and wake up in the two different worlds. It definitely has a thriller vibe because there are gunfights, chases, and politics involved, but on the other hand, the story had many fantasy elements when Thomas was in the other world what with a rainbow-colored forest and talking bats. It’s a book that’s hard to define in a genre, which I think is part of its overall appeal. The story definitely held my interest all the way through, though I would have preferred if the book stuck to Thomas’ point of view solely.
The Setting: On Earth, the book traveled from Colorado to Atlanta (shout out for my area!) to Bangkok. Though out of these areas, you could tell Ted Dekker was the most comfortable in Bangkok. He even included the characters speaking some Tagalog.
Epic Things: I really liked in the other world that characters could mold wood into shapes. It was a really neat concept and as a sculptor, I think that would be fun. The white lions were also really cool. It’s always serene when an animal is white for some reason.
The Theme: This book had strong themes of the Fall of Adam and Eve. I can’t tell you too much because of spoilers, but there are very strong Biblical themes.
Content Cautions: The book is pretty clean. There is some blood when characters are shot, but none of the wounds are graphically described. There’s no swearing or sexual content either.
What We Can Take Away For Our Writing:
1.) The Author Basing the Protagonist Off of His or Herself – I touch about this more in my post on this topic, but I’m going to give a brief little bit here. Obviously, the main character is based on Ted Dekker. From just hearing two speeches from Ted Dekker, I could figure that out. This definitely helped Ted write Thomas in a deep way since he knew so much about Thomas from life experiences. But I do wonder how he takes any criticism about this character since I could see anything being taken personally since Thomas pretty much is Ted.
How this can be applied to writing: As shown in this book basing a protagonist off of yourself can be very effective, but it can also have its pitfalls.
Conclusion: Overall, I believe the plot enticed me more than the characters did. I wanted to see how this all would end, but not because I was concerned with the characters necessarily. Since I have the rest of the books already I’m going to continue the series, but it’s not to the greatest start for me yet.
About the Author:
