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Winters Read
, October 19, 2011
(view all comments by Winters Read)
The premise of this story is a strange one, but that’s what I get for reading speculative fiction. In this story, the speculation is: “What if the Garden of Eden still existed on Earth?” It’s a rather odd idea, and it seemed quite surreal throughout the book. Although, that could be my fault as the reader.
Remote viewing is performed numerous times by the protagonist, Mark Grant. This may seem odd and maybe offensive to some; I find it a little strange personally. It was necessary, though, to lead up to him finding the Garden, but the parallels (or lack thereof) between the remote viewings of the Garden and the physical Garden confused me.
Now, for the writing. The book ultimately had an epic feel to it, from the imperfect father/wife to the “Dekker-esque” villain, The Serpent. This epic-ness really became apparent in the last 60 pages or so, in the final battle for Eden. That being said, Mr. Koceich made many slip-ups in his writing. First, there were many clumsy similes. They were effective and original, but far too wordy. Second, a few times a phrase or paragraph simply didn’t make any sense. This could have been a grammar, typo, or plain word omission problem. Some paragraphs seemed to have been put in far ahead of when they come into the story, and boggled me. Third, the switching between remote viewing and reality was often sudden and it took me too long to realize which I was reading about. This may be the cause of the seemingly-switched paragraphs mentioned above.
Characters took a large part in the story, and I respect that. Overall, one of the book’s main results is the redemption of a man, Mark Grant. It portrays him in various situations with his family, developing his and their characters really well. Like Ted Dekker, Matt Koceich develops his villains point-of-view very well. You get a feel for this person, seeing how similar you are; yet he still is distant, unfeeling, and unlike you in some way.
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