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Noah Primeval (2011)

by Brian Godawa(Favorite Author)

3.76 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0615550789 (ISBN13: 9780615550787)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Embedded Pictures Publishing

series

Chronicles of the Nephilim

review 1: This book was AWESOME!!!! I wish they would've made the recent Noah movie after this book instead of the garbage it was. This is how you do it folks! To me I thought the author did an exceptional job of taking the Biblical story of Noah & adding his own twists to fill in the blanks of what was not mentioned in the Bible, yet still sticking to the basic truths we know of the story. Of course he does add a lot of mythological themes but I believe all myths are based on some truth so I'm ok with it. And some may not even realize that creatures such as Behemoth and Leviathan are mentioned in the Bible. As far as crossbreed humans and other animals to make bird-men & dog-men, I don't know but if demons were walking the earth in the open, communing with humans as gods & teaching... more them sorcery and more like the Bible says they were, then I wouldn't be surprised if they did such atrocious things. All in all, this series is awesome. If you haven't read this book though, I HIGHLY recommend reading book 2 Enoch Primordial first. I think it's so weird that it's listed as book two even though it's a prequel to this one. You will get a better understanding of how the Watchers came to be & all the backstory & inside jokes from this book.
review 2: Good idea, but didn't interest me too much. Not sure what it was about the book that didn't click with me. Maybe it's being familiar with the Noah story in the Bible and having some pre-conceived ideas of what it was like. However, I liked Godawa's take in certain respects. Some of it felt like too childish a hero's tale and other parts felt too perverted. Not sure why some Christian authors (e.g., Litfin, Godawa) think adding risque sexual perversity will add anything to their books. It feels like they are just trying to be pseudo-mature. And I don't think "But the Bible mentions rape, bestiality, and incest!" is any excuse. The Bible doesn't paint any images of these things for the reader, it simply mentions that someone was raped or the fact of bestiality. If an author wants to write a rape into their story that's fine. But write about it with tact, which means not exploring it deeply, not dwelling on it. I'm sure the authors might think that laughable, but I doubt they could mount a good argument that would stand up to scrutiny (and honestly I'd like to see them try). Focusing on sexual immorality is dangerous in that it can give rise to illicit sexual desire in the reader (and the author who has to focus on it even more than the reader). The wrongness in such focus is also related to the nature of sexual immorality. Sex is a private affair that can only appropriately take place in privacy. Sexual immorality occurs (for the most part) when it is made public. And of course the nature of writing is to make an event public, in a sense. Even if what's being written about is an "internal dialogue", the point is to give everyone a peek into that internal dialogue. But sex is something that outsiders can't peek into. In that respect, it's unlike depictions of violence--not only because violence can be just, but also because the "publicity" of a violent act is not what makes it wrong per se. One can know that a sexual encounter has occurred/is occuring without peeking behind the curtains. This is how the Bible handles sexual immorality. This would be akin to the Bible mentioning that Lot's daughters raped him. But we should not (and should not want to) take a peek behind the curtain to see anymore than that. Litfin and Godawa seem to want lift the curtain a little bit or, perhaps, light a lamp behind the curtain so we can at least get some shadowy images in our mind.Because the sexuality (or rather, the *way* the sexuality is explored) felt unnecessary in both these novels (referring to Litfin's The Sword in addition to the one under review) it gives the impression that the stories of Godawa and Litfin are being carried along by their "mature" themes. Think of a movie like Saw or Hostel. These movies have no real story to tell. They just want to shock the audience with brutality and violence. But if Godawa and Litfin are letting these mature themes (that will surely shock some Christian lady who is used to reading Amish love novels) do some lifting for their stories then that only exposes the limits of the authors. If you have any real talent in telling a story, you could write for an audience of children (like Lewis) and capture the hearts of adults. If they want to have violence and sexual events that are too mature for children that's fine (again if handled tactfully), but maybe it would be wiser for them to add that stuff on as a finishing touch so that it doesn't feel like they are letting the novelty of "rough" Christian fiction be whats keeping the reader. less

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