The Beginning of Darkness: Book Review on Black

The Beginning of Darkness

5 Stars

Thomas Hunter is reckless and he often finds himself in the stickiest of situations. He starts out running from a couple of gangsters in an alleyway of Denver. Bullets fly by his head and his world goes completely dark. He wakes up in a strange new world inhabited with black bats and a man named Bill. The black bats look menacing as they watch him from their perches high atop the trees. Suddenly, the bats attack Thomas and darkness overtakes him.

Thomas Hunter wakes up from his dream and discovers that he’s in a garbage bin. He finds his way back home, closes the blinds, and turns off the lights. He’s waiting for the gangsters to arrive. In this tense moment, his sister, Kara, walks in. She’s stunned when she sees him holding a machete. Thomas tells her everything that’s happened – how real his dream was, the gangsters, and his head wound.

Kara stares at her brother and thinks he’s gone totally mad. She cleans the head wound for Thomas while he spills out all the details. He had borrowed money from the gangsters to bail his mom out of jail and buy a few other things. Kara is a nurse and so she gives Thomas some pain medicine. He drifts off to sleep and wakes up in an unreal world but somehow he feels like he’s been here before.

Thomas starts to doubt that he’s really dreaming about the black bats. Maybe he’s really dreaming about Kara. Perhaps Kara isn’t real and this is all just a dream. He wakes up and tells Kara that all of this isn’t real. She’s not convinced, and he makes the decision that he can prove it to her. He’ll do it. Thomas Hunter opens the door of his apartment, walks out to the railing and prepares to jump.

My Thoughts on Black:

In the first few chapters, this book literally grabs you, shakes you around, and never lets go. But in the later chapters, it wasn’t as exciting and I did lose some interest. When it came to the plot, I wasn’t surprised like I thought I was going to be. I had read that people mentioned that there were lots of twists and turns but it didn’t seem like that to me. That’s not to say that it didn’t have any but not what I would classify as “lots”.

You have to read this book carefully because it has many allegorical references. Some were easy to distinguish, some were harder, and I probably missed a few as well.

This is my first book that I’ve read of Ted Dekker, and he’s an incredibly gifted author. His writing seems so effortless that it’s never confusing. He can describe almost anything in his book, and I can easily envision it all. That’s a hard thing for an author to do, nonetheless do it so perfectly and in a strange fantasy world.

I highly recommend this book to readers who love fantasy/allegorical themes, supernatural thrillers, and Frank Peretti.

Check out Ted Dekker’s website: teddekker.com

This review was written for this blog and New Release Tuesday

God bless!
~Grace Thorson