2006-01-27 Every man dies. Not every man dies well.

This book has been described as a cross between "This Present Darkness" and "Reservoir Dogs". This seems a pretty good description to me, though I was also reminded of ?The Matrix? and ?Robin Hood? at times. The end result is much more like the book of Judges than a typical nice Christian Sunday School story. The "Christian culture clash" of nice vs. nasty and love vs. justice is portrayed very well in the lives of the monks. The issues raised about the rightness & wrongness of the way the monks act are dealt with, if only briefly, in the book -- you may not agree but at least you can understand.

I loved this book, not at a superficial level (although it's a good enough story), but deep down inside, it stirred something in me something about being a real man of God, with the emphasis on 'real man'. Forget quiche-eating techniques, this book is much stronger stuff. It?s also surprisingly realistic for a book with a lot of stories of supernatural activity ? perhaps because the supernatural activities themselves fit well with Biblical and church experiences. The author knows his stuff on this count.

This is not a book for everyone. It's too gory to be a kid's book. Teenage boys will love it; mothers whose goal is to raise their sons to be ?nice? will hate it. Many men will like it, too.

This book might just inspire many to be prepared to lay down their lives (literally) for Jesus. When ?This Present Darkness? came out, it triggered a big debate about spiritual warfare, because it inspired so many people to pray that the Christian community became concerned to correct minor imbalances and inaccuracies in what was, after all, a work of fiction. Whatever debates about the rights and wrongs of a ?just war? are triggered by this book, getting some of that disciplined, holy, fighting spirit back into today's church can't be a bad thing.