I’ve never read anything by Tosca Lee or by Ted Dekker, although my nephew says Ted Dekker is his favorite author. Maybe reading this book for Faith ‘n Fiction Roundtable is a good way for me to get a taste of Mr. Dekker’s writing and see if my nephew and I are on the same page.

Chapters 1-5: Forbidden posits a weird dystopian world in which people have no emotions except for fear. I’m not sure why they kept fear. But some people are drinking some bloody magic potion/poison and regaining emotions—maybe only the bad stuff like jealousy, rage, greed and ambition. There should be a violence warning on the front of the book since two people get murdered in the first two chapters, and lots of blood and gore ensue.

Chapters 6-10: For some reason, this book is reminding me of the Dune books by Frank Herbert. Lots of violence. Some kind of strange hierarchical government. People who act as if they’re on drugs. Maybe they are on drugs. I do think it’s difficult, if not impossible to write about people have no emotions. For instance, Mr. Spock in the original Star Trek series was supposedly without emotions, purely logical. However, Spock had emotions, and eventually they had to say that he was only half Vulcan and so had to battle his emotions to some extent. The people n this book are also not completely without emotions (other than fear); they show some sense of pleasure and loyalty and even anger or at least annoyance.

Chapters 11-end : Now this is getting too interesting for me to stop and blog.

So I started out blogging as I read, but I became absorbed in the story and forgot to blog. I suppose that’s a recommendation in itself. Some of the other F’nF roundtable readers found this book to be way too reminiscent of Mr. Dekker’s very popular Circle trilogy, but since I’ve never read anything else by either of the co-authors, it was all new to me. I did think that the central idea of the book was hammered a little to obviously and a lot too often. Some explanation like the following was repeated several times in the last half of the book:

“Yes. I drank some ancient blood and it changed me. If I’m right . . . If the vellum is right, the world is dead. Everyone! But I was brought back to life by the blood.”

The theme is that the lack of emotions and the pervasive fear in this future dystopia are a type of living death, and only a special potion made of blood and then, later, a saviour whose blood is pure and untainted, can reverse the death that pervades the planet and bring new life and feeling to the inhabitants of earth.

It’s a series, so the usual non-ending ending warning is applicable. The series is called The Books of Mortals. Forbidden is available now in bookstores. The second book in the series, Mortal, is promised for September 2012, and the third one, Sovereign, will be available in September 2013.

You can visit the blogs of other Faith ‘N Fiction roundtable members to find out more about Forbidden:

Book Addiction | Book Hooked Blog | Book Journey | Books and Movies | Crazy for Books | Ignorant Historian | Linus’ Blanket | My Friend Amy | My Random Thoughts | The 3 R’s | Tina’s Book Reviews | Wordlily