Melissa’s Review: Exile (The Oneness Cycle #1) by Rachel Starr Thomson

Exile (The Oneness Cycle #1)
written by Rachel Starr Thomson
published by Little Dozen Press, 2014

find it here: (affiliate links) Barnes & Noble, Amazon, iBooks, Book Depository, Goodreads

Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Did I enjoy this book: I didn’t expect to. It’s marketed as a Christian fantasy series, so I was expecting a sort of Left Behind, over-the-top-Christian vibe, which is typically a turnoff for me. Thomson, though, offers a refreshingly Omnist view of spirituality, and I totally dig it. She blurs the lines between prayer and meditation, good and evil, saints and sinners. It’s fabulous (and, despite the fantasy aspects, more real-life than I’ve found many Christian novels to be).

I will say Reese runs away just a little too often to be believable (hello, plot device!), but other than that my only complaint is that I don’t have the next book in the series yet. Sad.

 

GOLDEN LINES

“Diane had never learned to pray. It was a skill, something to be trained in, and she had resisted. Had refused to learn, in fact. Prayer was a full entering in. It was a flinging wide, a plunge, a total surrender to Oneness, bringing the Spirit surging and then riding the wave like a surfer racing toward shore. One with the wave, the exhilaration, the spray; One with the very ocean. Some were better at it than others.”

 

 

Would I recommend it: As someone decidedly annoyed by cut-and-dry labels, I’m especially fond of the way Thomson describes her book as “genre-bending,” and I think you should be too. It’s a fun, exciting read, and I hope to read more of the series.

 

 

 

About the book – from Goodreads: The battle is real. Page-turning, suspenseful Christian fantasy on the border between earth and spirit.
When Tyler fishes the girl out of the bay, he thinks she’s dead.

She wishes she was.

For Reese, life ended when the supernatural entity called the Oneness threw her out. For Tyler, dredging Reese out of the water means life is nothing he thought.

In a world where the Oneness exists, nothing looks the same. Dead men walk. Demons prowl the air. Old friends peel back their mundane masks and prove as supernatural as angels.

The Oneness changes everything.

And getting Reese home, making her One again, will change Tyler—and his roommate, Chris, whose connections with the Oneness have been buried most of his life—forever.