When I saw that I would be receiving Bryan Litfin’s novel The Gift to review, I discovered that it was the second in a planned trilogy. Sometimes you run across a book in a series and it doesn’t matter if you haven’t read the previous books, but in this case I fill it’s pretty essential for a real understanding of where the story has been and where it’s taking us. So I immediately purchased The Sword and read it rather quickly.
I absolutely loved The Sword. Set in a post-apocalyptic future, mankind is living in a feudal stage with no technology. The story, after you get past the introduction of how the world came to be like this, reads much like a fantasy, although we can never forget it is science fiction because of the ruins of the ancients. The Sword tells us how Teo and Ana find the Old Testament, their discovery within it’s pages of the one true God, and why they are on the run from the leading religious authorities in their kingdom of Chiveis.
In The Gift, Teo and Ana are on the run and discover a whole other world that’s out there. Ana gets caught up in the new society and goes through a fall from grace in a series of events and the choices she makes. Teo, while trying to protect her, is considered a low-class citizen and doesn’t have as much access to her as before. But he also is on a mission to get to Romo and find the Papa, who may be able to lead him to a copy of the New Testament. The Gift has instances that draw parallels to Bible stories, such as one character who acts like a traitorous Judas, selling Ana out and receives silver for her deed.
The first part of The Gift was interesting and kept me reading to see where it was going, but I felt a good deal of the middle was much slower than the first book. The latter half went at a much faster pace and I found myself not wanting to put it down. Like it happens so often with trilogies, the second book didn’t hold up as well as the first, but that’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy it. I love books like this series, and I’m looking forward to the final volume.
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