The Oracle Book: A Tale of Revelation
By Freeman L. Semons, Jr.
StoneGarden.Net Publishing
$10.95
Reviewed By Mike Nardine
Think of this book as a horror novel with a Christian theme. The plot isn’t new—none of the great plots are—but it’s plenty scary and I find no difficulty calling it a horror novel. Say what you will about religious fiction, few books can match the stories in the Book of Revelations for sheer frightening imagery.
In common with lecherous gods throughout the ages, Satan seeks to father a child, the Antichrist, on a mortal woman and bring about the apocalypse while at the same time trying to avoid being yanked back into the pit and imprisoned for a thousand years. Arnold Schwarzenegger most recently starred in a similarly plotted flick called “The End of Days.”
Like Schwarzenegger’s movie, this book puts a modern face on an evil as old as time itself. Unlike the movie, however, the hero of this book isn’t a muscled superman, but rather a beautiful young Christian woman named Monet Devereaux whose family has been the keeper of a book designed by The Lord centuries ago to keep the Evil One at bay. All you have to do is touch this book and your past, present and future will be displayed; a handy book if you really want to know what your boyfriend is doing, but a heavy burden as Monet and her family literally go through Hell to protect the book from Satan. Actually, everybody goes through Hell trying to protect the book from Satan: her pastor, her fiancé, her aunt, several best friends and an Archangel. And while Monet Devereaux isn’t “The Arnold,” she manages to give Satan a pretty good thumping in the process of holding on to the book.
I found this book easy to read. Not being particularly religious, that surprised me. There is something engaging about author Semons’ style that held me at times when the plot and the characters didn’t. I have wracked my brain trying to think of a way to describe his style and the only adjectives I can come up with that satisfy me are “clear” and “intellectual.”
“Clear” because the author’s narrative powers allow the reader to observe the characters’ environment on the page in front of him as if he were there; “intellectual” because in spite of the clear and forceful prose that sweeps us along, in spite of the author’s obvious belief in his story, he fails to provide his characters with the emotions the reader needs to identify with them. Sometimes, for example, they have the most unbelievably matter-of-fact conversations in situations that can only be described as horrific. This discordance causes the reader to remember he is reading a book and not living vicariously in another reality, something no author wants to happen. I hope the author will work on this in his next book.