ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Robin Parrish had two great ambitions in his life: to have a family, and to be a published novelist. In March of 2005, he proposed to his future wife the same week he signed his first book contract.More than ten years he spent writing for various websites, including About.com, CMCentral.com, and Infuze Magazine, which is a unique intersection between art and faith which he also conceived of and created.
One of his more "high concept" ideas for Infuze was to return to his love for storytelling and create a serialized tale that would play out every two weeks, telling a complete, compelling story over the course of nine months. That serialized story eventually came to the attention of several publishers, who saw it as a potential debut novel for Robin Parrish.
In 2005, Bethany House Publishers brought Robin full circle by contracting him for the rights to not only that first book, Relentless -- but two sequels including Fearless and Merciless. A trilogy that unfolded in the consecutive summers of 2006, 2007, and this year, 2008. One massive tale -- of which that first, original story would form only the foundational first volume of the three -- spread across three books.
Robin Parrish is a journalist who's written about pop culture for more than a decade. Currently he serves as Senior Editor at XZOOSIA.com, a community portal that fuses social networking with magazine-style features about entertainment and culture. He and his wife, Karen and son live in North Carolina.
ABOUT THE BOOK
The world as we know it has ENDED.DEATH and CHAOS creep across the globe and only the POWERLESS can RISE UP to stop it.
But can anything stop the onslaught of the DARKWORLD
From the earth's depths crawls a figure with skin like granite, flames for eyes, and the face of Grant Borrows.
Oblivion has arrived.
Every clock around the world has stopped. Time has frozen.
The Secretum have fulfilled the prophecy, unleashing on earth the most powerful being to walk the earth in thousands of years. His name is Oblivion and his touch is death.
He can't be slowed.
He can't be stopped.
And he can't be killed.
But as long as any live who trust in hope and love and freedom, the fight is not over.
They have only one chance before he brings forth the Darkworld.
Oblivion is: Merciless
"Robin Parrish is the kind of writer who understands how to entertain from the word go. His stories are sure to shape fiction for years to come."
~TED DEKKER, author of ADAM
If you would like to read the first chapter of Merciless, go HERE
MY REVIEW:
Merciless is the third and final book in the Dominion Trilogy. Personally, I think it is pretty important to have read the first two books in order for Merciless to make sense. I did not have the benefit of the other two books, so I spent the first half of the book totally confused. This book is a blend of fantasy, super heroes and spiritual analogy, and quite frankly is the strangest book I have ever read in my entire life.
I will say this, the writing is vivid, the plot moves at a pace that practically requires super powers to keep up with, and if anyone could describe the end of the world, Robin Parrish is that person. I have a dreadful time with the fantasy genre, and the fact that I read all 400 pages of this book should tell you that the writing style was indeed compelling. But I think I just wanted the book to make sense, so I kept reading.
The bottom line for me was this – the book is a symbolic, cataclysmic battle between man’s free will and selfish lust for power and God the Creator’s control over every aspect of his creation. Parrish takes some wild liberties with biblical stories – liberties that made me very uncomfortable. If you can go to the very brink of adding to God’s word and denying His power, Parrish does that in Merciless. Parrish is more than creative enough to have come up with some other avenue to explain his middle-of-the-world society than playing around with the truth of the Bible. The danger that this represented to me is that there are “religious” groups that promote Cain to some type of reverenced position – some even consider him the son of Satan. As a Christian, Parrish should have shown more respect for God’s word.
A side note – my teen son read this book before I did. (he's a new Christian) He said that the author’s characters were delusional (his words not mine) and he doesn’t understand how this book qualifies in any way as Christian fiction.
This is why I love that we can provide the first chapter links. I read Fearless, book two, so I was prepared to Merciless.
ReplyDeleteThe spiritual aspect that bothered me the most was that people died without believing in Christ. To a non-believer that wouldn't be an issue. I think the focus of the series was story with just a mustard seed of truth vs a message draped with story.
So much for light reading after last week. Poor girl!