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Reviews, Jun 24, 2022

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Shadow of Honor, Ronie Kendig
Lost Bits, Kerry Nietz
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Into Shadow's Fire, Mark Castleberry
Deceived, Madisyn Carlin
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"In a city where debts are paid in blood, one young man will learn that everyone needs help sometimes if they want to survive." New in the Lorehaven library: A Matter of Blood, Lauren H Salisbury
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Tilly
“Written in 1986, Frank E. Peretti’s novelette Tilly may feel melodramatic to today’s readers, but remains a tearful tale of brokenness and redemption.”
—Lorehaven on Jun 24, 2022

The Wonderland Trials
“Although indebted to a classic, The Wonderland Trials is inventive and colorful in its own right, abundantly able to charm and to intrigue.”
—Lorehaven on Jun 24, 2022

Rise of the Earthborn
“Societal intrigue plus steampunk flair and a dash of romance help make Emma Buenen’s Rise of the Earthborn a solid extra-biblical adventure.”
—Lorehaven on Jun 17, 2022

Elite
“Elite explores parallels to the early Church, beautifully intertwining faith and action in this high-stakes post-apocalyptic adventure.”
—Lorehaven on Jun 10, 2022

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Lorehaven helps Christian fans explore fantastical stories for Christ’s glory: fantasy, science fiction, and beyond. Articles, the library, reviews, podcasts, gifts, and the Lorehaven Guild community help fans discern and enjoy the best Christian-made fantastical stories, applying their meanings to the real world Jesus Christ calls us to serve. Subscribe free to get any updates you choose and to access the Lorehaven Guild.
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/ Library
Author:
Tosca Lee
Ages:
adult young adult
Genres:
science fiction
BookTags:
apocalyptic contemporary cults
Publisher:
Howard Books
“Tosca Lee’s thriller quests toward truth among apocalyptic madness.”
—Lorehaven review, spring 2019

The Line Between

Cult escapee Wynter Roth finds herself face-to-face with the apocalypse her former cult taught her to fear all her life.
Tosca Lee · science fiction for adult, young adult readers · January 2019

When twenty-two-year-old Wynter Roth is cast out of self-contained doomsday cult New Earth, a mysterious outbreak of rapid early-onset dementia is already spreading across the nation.

As Wynter struggles to start over in a world she’s been taught to regard as evil, she finds herself face-to-face with the apocalypse she’s feared all her life, convinced she’s made a terrible mistake. Until the night her sister, still a New Earth member, shows up with a set of medical samples that holds the key to decoding the disease, and Wynter learns there’s something far more sinister at play.

Now, as the power grid fails and the country descends into chaos, Wynter must find a way to get the samples to a lab in Colorado. Uncertain who to trust, she takes up with former military man Chase Miller, who has his own reasons for wanting to get close to the samples in her possession, and to Wynter herself.

Review of Featured Review: The Line Between

Tosca Lee’s thriller quests toward truth among apocalyptic madness.
Lorehaven Review Team, spring 2019

If you have ever hated cults—or God forbid, were trapped in any cult-like activity yourself—you’ll love to hate novelist Tosca Lee’s fictional New Earth International.

In Lee’s latest mid-apocalyptic novel, The Line Between, former cult member Wynter Roth, 22, is cast out of New Earth. (Already the Christian’s heart rages, for the cult’s very name is a Satanic slander against God’s future dwelling, as in Revelation 13:6.) Cult leaders proclaim Wynter an apostate and shut the Enclave’s gates behind her.

At least Wynter has started to prepare for this. She has begun to see past the cult’s evils and the lies of charismatic entrepreneur-turned-manipulator Magnus Theisen.

Like many real-life cult members, Wynter was brought into the group as a child. Her vulnerable mother was trying to escape a bad relationship and rebuild her life. And like other escapees, Wynter also fights to adapt to the modern world and healthy friendships as well as the seemingly simple task of thinking independently.

But unlike other cult escapees, Wynter faces an apocalypse—a real one—straight from any cult leader’s worst end-times predictions. In this doomsday, people across America are catching a virus that quickly turns into early-onset dementia. Literally, the world is going crazy. Victims crash their cars and attack one another. Power grids are on the fritz. Somewhere out there you may even find Russians colluding.

As it turns out, Wynter has the only biological samples that could lead to a cure.

Lee mixes chilling, cracking suspense with thoughtful character growth, as readers follow Wynter’s frightening present while also recalling her perma-frosted past. Each character leaps from the page, pressed by experienced storytelling hands.

Tosca Lee has created many multi-award-winning novels in biblical genres, such as Iscariot and Demon: A Memoir, and in supernatural genres, such as The Progeny and The Firstborn. She lives in Nebraska with her husband and children.

ToscaLee.com
@ToscaLee

Explore this novel at the Lorehaven Library.

Wynter herself feels just like a strong yet self-questioning cult escapee. Her female and male friends provide refreshing support, acting as true heroes, yet bearing very human flaws. Meanwhile, our heretical heavy, Magnus, struts across these fictional compounds, acting like real cult founders, yet with his own especially nasty spins.

Lee strikes other story-and-truth balances in portraying the goodness in both non-Christian and possibly Christian heroes. Spoiler alert: Wynter won’t go straight from false gospels to the real one. But, from a Christian’s vantage, she does meet people whom God has blessed with “common grace.” They not only give good gifts to their children (Matthew 7:11), but strive to care for others’ spiritually abused children.

Other heroes reflect overtly biblical beliefs, such as a fellow escapee who blesses Wynter with simple, firm, and compassionate truth. “Whatever your so-called (or real) infraction, you are not damned,” this woman tells Wynter. “You need to know there is life and love in the world. I’ve seen it. God is far bigger than the Enclave.”

To help someone escape false teaching or a cult, this is exactly what you must say.

These truth glimpses give The Line Between surprising heart-warmth amongst the chill, while its road-trip quest drives fast through mad territory and never once feels bogged down in snowbanks. Even by the finale, we get hints that our heroes have learned that yes, sometimes you must stay preserved from a world gone mad, but for the greater mission of helping others in that world. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, you can’t simply separate from evil people—not even cultists—in order to avoid evil. That very line between evil and good cuts through every human heart.

Sure, we can know such a truth in our heads. But stories like Lee’s (to be followed by A Single Light in September 2019) help us feel that truth. And sometimes they can even help us escape our own false beliefs to thaw in the freedom of gospel grace.

Best for: Teen and adult readers, especially those who dare to explore the ways real people can corrupt biblical faith for their own abuses of power.

Discern: A few swear words and misuses of God’s title; descriptions of violence brought on by an apocalyptic mental-illness plague; acts of spiritual and emotional manipulation, including a villain’s attempted seduction; unmarried young man and woman sleep together for comfort, but without any mention of sexual activity.

  1. Speculative Faith | In Our New Podcast Episode, We Encourage You to Be a Creative 'Prepper' for Hard Times says:
    March 17, 2020 at 6:45 am

    […] Lorehaven reviews The Line Between […]

    Reply
  2. Speculative Faith | Win A Digital Copy of Tosca Lee's Pandemic Thriller 'The Line Between' says:
    April 3, 2020 at 7:59 am

    […] Two Lorehaven magazine subscribers will win digital copies of Tosca Lee’s pandemic thriller The Line Between. […]

    Reply

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Lorehaven helps Christian fans explore fantastical stories for Christ’s glory: fantasy, science fiction, and beyond. Articles, the library, reviews, podcasts, gifts, and the Lorehaven Guild community help fans discern and enjoy the best Christian-made fantastical stories, applying their meanings to the real world Jesus Christ calls us to serve. Subscribe free to get any updates you choose and to access the Lorehaven Guild.