I love Frank Peretti. I was hooked for life after reading the first few pages of the book that made him big, This Present Darkness. The beginning of the book described two ordinary working-class men, dressed a bit shabbily, walking through a carnival filled with people. They sidestep people, spilled popcorn, etc, and they finally come out into a clearing and make their way over to a small, simply built church. I remember thinking, Who are these guys, what is this leading up to? They enter, unnoticed, into the church and find a solitary man kneeling at the altar. All of a sudden, their shabby clothes melt away, and they become bathed in light as their wings unfold and they begin to minister to the praying man. They're angels! I remember feeling warmth and awe at the realization that those ordinary guys were beautiful messengers of God.
Since then I have voraciously read all of his adult novels. (He's done a kid's series too). He is so awesome, not only because he's a good writer, but because he has a way of getting a message across that doesn't seem so . . . message-driven. It's not fluff and stuff (my former complaint about most Christian fiction), but neither is it obvious and heavy-handed. He's real. (And it seems that he has a Pentecostal background, too). Right now, I'm reading his newest book Monster, and though it has been a long while since he's come out with new stuff, he hasn't lost his touch. I could gush on and on . . . I remember lending his last book before he came out with Monster, The Visitation, to someone at church. I think everyone needs to read that book--it's basically about the struggles of a burnt-out pastor who is disillusioned with the church and how he faces a false-Christ character who begins to decieve the members of his small town. But anyway, the guy that I lent the book to was up all night reading it, and gave it back to me the following day. He's really that good.
Well, back to my reading!
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