Review of Ted Dekker's Green

I read Green because it was the recommended starting point in the Circle series and because I loved Three. My expectations were high when the author compared his work in this series to Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings. I was expecting poignant, touching, thrilling, encouraging, even funny in places.

I was sorely disappointed. I found the characters annoying, and in Janae and Billy's case, cliche. Do we really need yet another vampire story? The dialog was high handed in many places, and the only characters I could care about were Chelise, Qurong and Patricia. There was such a focus on evil, gore, violence and sin that at the end of the book I felt hopeless and like I needed to take a shower. I feel something is wrong when a Christian author focuses more on these things than God's goodness and love.

I did think it was clever that Billy's name kept changing as he lost more and more of himself, and I was able to see many Biblical parallels, but these didn't redeem Green. I won't be reading the rest of the series.