The Seraph Seal by Leonard Sweet & Lori Wagner

An epic tale of good and evil based on the four horsemen of the Apocalypse found in the book of Revelation.

Using the four horsemen of the Apocalypse to symbolize the four Gospels, four transcendentals, and four forces of the universe (air, water, earth, and fire), Sweet and Wagner weave a fast-paced, end-times tale of good vs. evil and the promise of a new dawn for humanity.

Set in 2048, when planet Earth is suffering from the damaging effects of years of misuse and abuse, cultural history professor Paul Binder receives a mysterious letter that leads him to examine a lost 2nd-century Diatessaron manuscript. Ancient prophecies, cryptic letters, and strange events set him on a course to uncover the missing clues that could lead humanity into a new age. Each character embodies elements of the four horsemen in a race to save the world from total destruction. Layered with forgotten symbolism from the ancient, Jewish, and Christian traditions, the novel is a type of engaged fiction in which the main character's lost journal serves as a guide to the reader in interpreting clues and understanding the novel's conclusion.

I Give This Book: 1 Star


My Thoughts:
I was very excited to begin reading this book when I first received it. The first few chapters of the story were great and I was thinking,"This is going to be a very interesting book". Boy was I wrong! After reading those chapters, the story got to be very confusing and dragged on.


What I Didn't Like:

• Almost every page was about a different character and there were so many characters (too many in my opinion), that it was very difficult to keep track of them all. Every time the book switched to a different character, I thought "Who is this again?" and by the time I remembered, the story switched to a different character. This was very annoying and made the story very tedious for me to read. I was constantly flipping back to see who was who.
• The book makes several remarks about God wanting to give the world another chance and for that to happen "The Chosen One" has to decode cryptic messages. 
• This book mentions several different beliefs & cultures (Kabbalah, Catholicism, Judaism, Mayans, etc.) and makes it seem as though all the different beliefs have a part to play in saving the world.
• How a Christian book (even being fiction) could or would state that "the planets aligned  for the first time in millions of years" (page 409) as though it were a fact. I felt that was contrary to the Bible.
• How Paul was made to seem like a modern-day Christ. How he was the only one who could bring the world to salvation.
• The *new* Scripture that they find that was totally fabricated. The Bible is quite clear when it states that no one should add to or take away from God's Word. 
• How the United States of America is referred to as "USAmerica". This alone wouldn't have affected my rating of the book, I just found it extremely annoying.
• I really didn't like the ending of this book! I won't say what happens, but I found it to be very far-fetched and completely unscriptural.

What I Did Like:

• Hardly anything. The only thing that comes to mind is Seraphim, Father Arnaud's bird. I loved how the bird would sing hymns. 

This book took me forever to read! I thought this book was very boring, and there are too many things that I disagreed with and found to be offensive to my faith. I will not be reading this book again, and definitely would not recommend this book to anyone. In fact I would discourage anyone from reading it.

I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze®.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.


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