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White: The Great Pursuit

2005Ted Dekker

4/5

The Circle starts out as a flawed (due to Dekker's poor characterization) but enjoyable fantasy epic with a powerful allegorical message about God's love for His people, but as the trilogy progresses, Dekker's story increasingly falters, and by the end it unravels on itself, leading two very good volumes into a disappointing conclusion.Once again, Dekker fails to resolve his story in a meaningful or concise manner, and a promising trilogy ends on a disappointing note. The novel in itself is not entirely bad, thought the allegorical elements across the three books end up being so rigid that they lose their resonance and meaning. The most offensive move the author makes here (aside from his consistent inability to create fleshed-out human characters) is that his ending is purely nonsensical. Yes, I understand that this story continues in a future novel (Showdown), but it doesn't even follow the rules Dekker creates. While from a narrative perspective, the ending of the "real world" plotline works, there are three glaring plot inconsistencies that mar this book (and take away from the first two novels also):(1) The issue of the blank books. I'll grant that Showdown deals with this issue and explains what became of the books, but it is a pretty cheap move for a writer to insert something significant into his plot for the purpose of using it in a separate story. Furthermore, they present an annoying plot hole in the form of the characters not using such an obvious and powerful tool as the books to stop the virus. While Thomas and Monique's lives are important, it's just stupid to suggest that the characters would not write 'they found an antivirus and saved the world' or any other arbitrary sentence that could end the global crisis.(2) On a related issue, for that matter, the words of the mysterious Billy that caused the entire saga to occur don't follow Dekker's rules that the blank books only change history within the histories. Since the timeline only allows Billy to do this after he has come into contact with the books, and the books cross over in 2010 with Thomas, Billy's writing must take place during or after the events of White. We can understand the "histories" as any time before the events of the forest world (given that it is a time far enough in the past that the living generation does not remember it, hence the Books of History). Technically, Billy could write Thomas out of his own time (since his time is withing the histories), but to write him into the forest world is to write him into the future, and violates the rules of the blank books.(3) The third plot hole that bothered me was the fact that the Roush state the Thomas' actions changed history by altering the timeline. They go on to state the the Deception and the Tribulation still occur, only the date has been changed. So after the entire story, Thomas saves the world, but it is doomed at a later date anyway, so he merely prolonged the inevitable. It's Terminator 3 all over again.(4) My final point is a theological fallacy that weakens the effect of the entire trilogy. Since we are led to believe in the end that the forest world is not an alternate reality, but actually the future of our own world, and Justin becomes not an allegory but a physical manifestation of Jesus, the books imply that Jesus had to die twice in the same reality in order to save humanity, a notion that most Christians would find heretical.The third book is not a narrative disaster, it just suffers from a lot of negative plot elements and poor decisions that weaken not only this book but the whole trilogy. The Circle story started off as a promising allegory about God's love for the people, but it's almost as if Dekker forgot about earlier elements he had committed to and in the end didn't know how to finish his story. I give it three stars as a recommendation, but only for the reason that if you've read the first two books (which are quite good), you'll obviously want to know how it ends. But expect to be disappointed.

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