The Restorer -- Sharon Hinck

A scraping sound under the eaves interrupted me. For a second, I thought I saw something move in the shadows ... Voices ... seemed to come from the boxes in the darkest end of the attic ... In that instant the air became thick with pressure. My breath caught in my lungs. My ears roared as forces surged together under the eaves. The attic crackled with threads of electricity ... Then everything exploded.

Strange murmuring voices, figures in the darkness, lightning, energy, and then...
Susan Mitchell is flung head-first into a completely different – and very turbulent – world.
The first thing she sees, a fight to the death between two sworn enemies, strengthens the strong suspicion that she has finally gone insane. After all, for the past few months she has been gradually pulled down into a vortex of deep depression, fueled by the endless hassle of raising two teens and two toddlers. Manifesting doubts and fears about her once-strong purpose had finally driven her husband, Mark, to create an attic hideaway free of iPods, laundry, and fingerprint-covered windows.

Instead of calming Susan, however, it has just the opposite effect. After being flung through an inter-dimensional portal and meeting Tristan, whom she deems a murderer, and his mysterious (and rather creepy) friend Kieran, Susan finds out that she is evidently the promised Restorer, sent by the One to lead the people of the Clans back to Him. Understandably, Susan is a bit disconcerted by this information (okay, maybe a lot). What is a soccer mom from suburbia supposed to do about the situation in which she finds herself – facing Hazorite armies, mind-controlling enemies, a power-hungry politician, and the gnawing questions that eat away at her soul?

This book was a very engaging read for me, with the combination of fantastic writing style, vibrant emotions, and stimulating theology. Sharon Hinck has created a masterful work using a palate of hope, love, sorrow, anger, fear, spiritual purpose, and a whole spectrum of others. The theology is both accurate and deeply felt by the readers. The portrayal of the One in vivid detail encouraged and strengthened me to, as the one-word theme of the book says, Surrender. I found nothing offensive in the theology but rather felt impassioned by the up-close and personal view. Clarity is also a big plus for me in this story. The plot was easy to follow, meaningful, and charged with unexpected turns on every page.

What kind of read was it? Well, let me put it this way: I put it down at bedtime Friday night on about page twenty. I picked it up again Saturday morning and couldn’t put it back down until I finished it three hours later. Then I had to go and request the sequel from the library card catalog. Reading it wasn’t hard, but the reading level and vocabulary content were stimulating. It was long enough to give me a feeling of satisfaction and short enough to leave me wanting more. After the first few paragraphs I felt like I personally knew Mark and Susan, and a few paragraphs after meeting Tristan and Kieran I felt like I knew them as well. The characters are deep, colorful, and fault-filled (a good thing for fiction, since it helps the reader to identify with them – and identify I did. Kieran nearly brought me to tears.) The setting felt a bit odd at first, being a mix of sci-fi and fantasy technology (they fight with swords and have technology powered by magnets), but after a little while I got used to it. The plot is relatively fast-paced, but the events are clear and flow into each other nearly seamlessly.

In short, I picked up this book because: the cover intrigued me and because I saw it on a friend’s list of the top ten works of Christian fantasy fiction. I picked it up again after the first read because the story and characters captivated me and couldn’t get enough of them. In my opinion, the series ought to be a lot longer than three books. The Restorer is a fantastic read.