Title: Red

Author: Ted Dekker

Publisher: WestBow Press

ISBN: 0-8499-1791-3

Genre: Inspirational/Sci-Fi/Suspense

 

Thomas Hunter’s story accelerates in Red, the continuation of Dekker’s saga, The Circle trilogy. The publisher recommends that you read Black before Red or you won’t know what’s going on. I encourage you to read my review of Black for the same reason.

 

Though the world finally listens to Thomas regarding the threat of the Raison Strain, he is fresh out of ideas unless he dreams. And dream he does. He stays in his altered reality for fifteen years, becoming a leader of men in which he learns new skills that transform him into a strategist and great warrior. He also marries and has children in his other world. During the course of a battle that could decide the fate of his people, he decides to return to the world we know to find crucial information that could save them.

 

In the second novel, not only does Thomas enter two worlds through his dreams, his wife Rachelle joins him. Through her he discovers how to find Monique de Raison, the only person who can create an anti-virus to save mankind.

 

Red introduces a new character, though not really new, simply different. Justin is his name and he’s come to pay the price for his people’s sin. Dekker develops an interesting allegory of the fallen world and God’s provision to save His people. The title of the book says it all. Dekker delivers an unexpected twist at the end when important characters who’ve crossed over to both dream worlds are killed in one, while remaining alive in the other. Or at least we hope. I won’t find out until I read White.

 

I loved Red’s message of God’s love and His provision through His son. If the point of Christian fiction is to entertain while providing a powerful emotional experience, one in which the reader will find a deeper understanding of God, then Dekker has succeeded.