So when a student is excited enough about a book to bring it in to loan to me, then I do my very best to read the whole thing. This is sometimes a pleasure and sometimes quite painful (Eragon comes to mind).Well, I did read all of Saint. It starts out very well--confusing in a good way, surprising, intriguing, very suspenseful--then degenerates into repetitive ideas and phrases. Throw in the obligatory salvation scene (it's Christian fiction) and I found it very tiresome.Full disclosure: I'm Christian, but overall I don't like fiction marketed as such. I think that religious truths are conveyed much more powerfully when they're not in a deliberately "religious" book. (I feel the same way about CCM. Secular music that asks genuine religious questions is much more compelling to me.)For example: Did you read A Wrinkle in Time? Do you remember the scene when Meg screams I LOVE YOU, CHARLES WALLACE? Powerful. Honest. Believable. Memorable. It's not Christian fiction but it says everything important about love and grace and sacrifice.This book tries to do something similar, but because it's hobbled by the requirements of its genre (and the shallowness of the characterization), the climax has none of the power it needs to be believable.Now add in a few more weaknesses (the following contains some mild spoilers):1. Yes, Carl doesn't know who he is. I get it. Unfortunately, I never got to know him either--and therefore didn't care much. The closest we get to knowing him is when he's using his skills as an assassin, mostly in the first part of the book. He's intriguing then, at least. But it's hard to care about an assassin--Dekker tries to pull it off by making Carl childlike when not in superkiller mode, but it doesn't work. He's just dull.2. Kelly, who DOES know who she is, isn't any deeper as a character. She loves Carl. She feels bad for what she did to Carl. That's pretty much it. She's got about as much depth as one of those girls Indiana Jones carts around.3. This is a real spoiler, so please beware:Carl avoided killing through most of the book (much like Arnold in T2)--when anyone died, it was either collateral damage caused by the bad guy or else a direct hit by the bad guy. The one exception? "Saint" (Carl) took hostage, then killed an Arab who was lobbying for the disarmament of Israel. He was no good guy--he had also contracted for the assassination of the US President--but the utter lack of soul searching on the part of the hero OR the noncombatant super religious good guys was disturbing to me. Assassination is murder. Carl was not acting in self-defense. He'd gotten Kelly back. The guy was unarmed. Maybe he needed to die--but maybe someone should've wondered a TEENY bit about it.4. The villain! Ugh! Yeah, he's evil, but does he have to be so super evilly-evil? Englishman is a tiny bit creepy when he's first introduced in a viewpoint section--he's self-aware enough to realize he's a cliche, which could be chilling--but then he degenerates into being so evil that he's just silly.Two books that do a much better job: The Stand--Randall Flagg is terrifying. Cowboy boots. Smiley face button.And Roy Miro in Dean Koontz's Dark Rivers of the Heart. I read that book over 10 years ago and I still remember the twisty evil beneath the bland friendly surface.The point is that evil hides itself--which is certainly not unknown to the Christian fiction genre...so why make Englishman so completely over -the-top?5. Real spoiler here. The climax was just...weird. These are two super top-notch assassins! The deadliest in the world! And here they are head to head--throwing rocks at each other. Really? That's it? Yeah, they're throwing them supernaturally, but still...OK, so here's the upshot: I finished it, and it wasn't nearly as painful an experience as finishing Eragon was. So now I have to figure out how to let the student know that I appreciate his loaning me the book, while not encouraging him to loan me other books by Dekker...
This probably wasn't the best book to read as my introduction to Ted Dekker. But it was staring at me at the used bookstore, and nothing indicated it was a second book in a trilogy, so I picked it up. I regret doing so.Carl is an assassin for a shadowy group. That group does bad things to him in order to keep him under control. He kills some people, and eventually he is sent to kill the President of the USA. Meanwhile, David Abraham (who has a son Samuel, no less,) is warning the president about this group, as well as a plot to disarm Israel. You pretty much can guess what will happen next.Well, the first thing is that this is book two in a trilogy, and the book itself says nothing about being part of one. Normally this doesn't matter, as second books bring you up to speed on what has happened before, but this one doesn't. This makes for a confusing mess where we are supposed to care about characters who have no backstory and very little purpose. The revelation of Carl's real name for one had absolutely zero impact, and most other characters were ciphers. Whatever Project Showdown was must have only been described in the first book, as you get little info on it here.There's also a lot of weirdness. For the amount of manipulation the X guys do to people, they seem very casual about harming or throwing away their agents. Carl seems to have psychic powers, but they really don't explain how or why he has them. Even if supernatural, there needs to be a reason why he can do what he can. The names again-David Abraham, Samuel, Paradise, Co. No subtlety there. The Israel thing is barely touched on, and considering that popular opinion was in favor of the villain's view, why risk changing that with what he did? Carl's true military career is confusing. Referring to a past, entirely different trilogy was an eye-roller too. There are a lot of things which make the book feel more haphazard than it should.I think I just picked a bad book to read by him, but I didn't really like it. I'll have to try his other ones.
What do You think about Saint (2006)?
Carl is in Black Ops, in the X Group. He has special abilities that have been broken into him through mental and drug abuse of black ops. President Stenton's advisor David Abraham recognized Carl's face during a summit on US soil about working against Israel. The Iranian minister, Assom Feroz is Carl's target.Carl can't trust his feelings, implanted by black ops. He can't trust the woman he loves because SHE can't trust her feelings.So can he trust Samuel about who he REALLY is?And then there's Englishman, who hates Johnny. His powers are slightly different. His existence is as well.To be honest, I'd forgotten the events of "Showdown" and what Project Showdown was. It was a decent sequel, but I should have read them in succession, and not wait a month between.
—Jaime
With the overexposure of "24" and "Alias" type books, movies and TV shows, I thought that Saint would be a poorly done psuedo-Christianzied attempt. I was wrong...well sort of. In a WELL represented genre, Saint's premise was actually unique and quite engaging. For a lack of a better term, it was awesome. But then, the plot got oh-so gradually unstable to the point where the ending was simply awful. The characters never got to flesh out their personalities. The villian, who had the potential to be incredibly complex and insidous just became redundant. And the main character, who had extreme personality issues, could have been slowly formed into a well-loved protaganist. He too, became redundant, if not annoying. The ending, without going into any spoliers, felt way too rushed; as if Dekker was desperately trying to make a deadline. I guess there is another book written after Saint where the story should pick up. But Saint's ending wasn't written with a solid end to a plot nor a cliffhanger. Suffice to say, I won't be reading it.
—Joshua
This was better than Showdown, and there are a few parts of this that are really well done. The end leaves a bit to be desired. There are too many things that he did not explain well enough, and a few things that he over-indulged in. Especially his pulpit moment. And as far as that goes, it did not fit in well with the rest of the story. But I am sure there is pressure by the Christian publisher to get a good three-point sermon into the story, even if it is a story about an assasin. I suppose my take on this is, do you want to write a fun entertaining story about an assasin, or do you want to write a sermon about faith? It is a stretch to combine the two. As a Christian, I would rather see someone say--you know, this is a cool story, with some great action, and interesting characters, and you know what--I couldn't really tie in a beautiful spiritual lesson plan with this, but it is still fun, is almost as wild as a Dean Koontz novel, and free of any sexual or profanity-laced writing. I would prefer that, at least once in a while. The spiritual gymnastics involved in getting from assasin to discipleship training are a bit silly, and even a tad insulting.I will add that Dekker's writing is as good as Koontz or Patterson, and he can generate some high-octane moments. On that point, my hat is off to Mr. Dekker. This is rare to find in the Christian market.
—Jason Reeser
