Good Friday's Book Review: The Price of Redemption

Title: The Price of Redemption

Author: Michelle Warren

Date: 2015, 2018

Quote: "Joshua is alive. I have seen him! I have touched him."

Joshua Davidson, the modern Christian who was allowed to do what Jesus did, took two bullets to each lung and one in the heart, and a "crown" that stuck poisoned needles into his scalp. He looked dead. He was buried. He was seen walking about a few days later, though not for long or by many people. Like Jesus of Nazareth. 

What you might not like about this trilogy is that Joshua seems to be a little too much like Jesus of Nazareth. Though we're all supposed to be doing what Jesus would have done if he'd been born in our time, with our bodies and our talents, the idea of anyone aspiring to copy the Resurrection and Transfiguration feels wrong to some Christians. We have to let that pass for the sake of the parable. (Or not.)

There's also the trendy use of "dark" to mean what young people don't want to admit is sin or evil. Some of the good characters in this trilogy belong to ethnic groups in which almost everyone has dark brown eyes. Their eyes are always described as brown, here. When a character in this trilogy has "dark eyes" the eye color is really blue, and the eyes are dilated, as Hitler's were by stimulant drugs, but in these books, apparently, by pure evil. Bah humbug. The position of this web site is that lack of moral enlightenment may be described as darkness in a non-judgmental way, but sinful, or evil, or even bad acts need to be described as sinful or evil or bad, not as "dark." Joshua's multiethnic eyes might be light brown but it would be surprising if Rau's or Eun Ae's eyes were not dark. And it's not a bad thing that they are. Readers who enjoy having dark eyes, as I do, have to pardon a lot of slurring about the way contact with the Evil Principle darkens the Blakes' baby-blues. They sometimes have dilated eyes.

Anyway, when Joshua was murdered, the crown with the poisoned needles was shoved down on his head by Selena Blake, the half-grown, otherwise innocent, daughter of the Prime Minister who ordered Tristan, as an army officer, to shoot Joshua. Selena's mockingly "crowning" Joshua "king" was not ordered by Mark Blake, though. Selena was the channel through which Blake was manipulated by a man his equal, Eric Kensington, leader of the Socialist Party. Kensington is not only a Socialist; in fact, as we meet him in this story, he's not even a Socialist. Socialists are otherwise normal human beings who do things that have horrible consequences because they believe Socialism can work for the benefit of their community or country. Most people who support the Church of Satan are basically normal human beings, with emotional issues, who often do themselves damage while they're just trying to flout the religion in which they grew up. Kensington has become a "true" Satanist, playing priest at "services" where people drink the real blood of living creatures they sacrifice to Satan. As Joshua was allowed to channel Jesus' ministry into a living body, Eric Kensington has been allowed to channel the Evil Principle into a living body. 

Eric Kensington has not acted alone. He reached Selena through a school friend, his son Alec, who serves Satan's cause because he's still young and small enough to be beaten and tortured. Through their children he hopes to gain control over Prime Minister Blake, although, immediately after Joshua's death, New Zealand has reached a level of chaos at which, according to their constitution, the Governor-General has taken over. 

This volume is the story of the confrontation between Blake and Kensington. It could be about civil liberties, but it's not. Blake has violated citizens' civil liberties by having the army kill Joshua. It's understood, too, that nobody objected to Kensington being a Socialist, if that had been enough to satisfy his greed. Ruinous taxes and an extravagant government are not quite the same as literally drinking people's blood.

The confrontation and those involved in it are very emotional. People hug and hit, brandish weapons, damage property. The point this part of the story is making is that even Judas and Caiaphas could have been saved by the redeeming love of God, but only through a sacrifice. A literal sacrifice. Since Joshua isn't dead, the characters' minds seem to crave and create another one. One of the children will die, or seem to die, to get that message through Kensington's thick head.

There's a sub-plot, or an additional element in the plot, concerning the medical students Rachel Connor and James Lester. They didn't know each other when they started their training at the hospital, and Rachel is married, but the way they work well together despite friendly rivalry and bickering, and something about their faces, convince Rachel that James is her long-lost brother. A more mundane issue--James's dipping into a patient's medication--causes them to act more like enemies than like siblings. How will Rachel, who is only just becoming a Christian through her admiration for Joshua (he rescued her from a boiling spring in volume one), deal with ordinary human sin? This plot interweaves with the main plot; these characters are all well acquainted with one another.

Despite scenes of joy this is a grim book. What Christians celebrate on "Good Friday" we believe to be a good thing, but the story as it really happened is much grimmer and gorier than this book--and this book is not for the squeamish.