Book Review: The Frailty of Hope

Title: The Frailty of Hope

Author: Hunter Chadwick

Publisher: Clarity 4 Truth

Date: 2023

Quote: "She swept away all those soldiers as if they were nothing. What's to stop her doing the same to us...?"

Nothing is. This is a fantasy that recalls the horrors of transhumanism. Most people who have been forced to swallow "the Elixir" don't survive. The ones who do survive are traumatized...and they may have magic powers. In this book, which is volume two of three, a waif of a girl called Perin and an older, tougher, but less friendly woman called Lana join their magical powers. Perin can dissolve her material form into ghostliness; Lana can command magical plants. 

Magic was not unknown to their fantasy world before the enemy "Brotherhood" started feeding people the Elixir. Trace, the warrior specially responsible for protecting Perin (though she protects him too), and the other adults in their party also have some special abilities but Perin, so young she's not even sentimental about boys yet, is the one who has the crisis of conscience toward the end of the book: She was given a magic seed to protect herself. Can she use it to protect other survivors of the Brotherhood's horrible experiments? 

Along the way, the warriors in the party will fight magical and physical battles, the other adults will use their talents too, and a character called Pariah will show what he's really made of. This is a longish read but it's a classical fantasy plot that should appeal to lovers of the genre.

Is this a Christian book, specifically? In some ways it is; the author is a Christian, and Bible passages appear as epigrams at the beginning of each chapter. However, the epigrams are physical descriptions that describe the action of the story. What we know about the characters' religion is that a sympathetic character refers to a Creator. The characters are conscious of morality--a universal morality. We know this story is Christian, specifically, because that is the author's religious identity. The characters could be imagined as belonging to some other faith tradition, even having one of their own in their fictional universe. The story is accessible to readers of any religious identity or none.