4.5 stars

wow. I'm writing this right after finishing, so I haven't even fully processed everything that just happened in the end. But I mean... what the hell?? First of all, Hadassah is a saint, and I want to be more like her Gentle, kind, compassionate, loving unconditionally. the only flaw I think she had was that she was so ready and willing to love everyone, that it made her blind to the wrongs people would do against her. I'm not sure if this is because of Francine Rivers' writing style, but I also don't really like the romantic developments between her characters. They occur so suddenly after a conversation or two and seem entirely based on physical attraction at first, rather than love sprouting from truly knowing a person. I'm not sure if she does this intentionally, perhaps as a way to distinguish between ancient times and now, where people lived much shorter lives and girls seemed to be a bit more... "passionate" and more easily swayed in the heart. Perhaps Rivers didn't even want to focus on the stages of falling in love, but rather what happens after, when both parties are in love and emotionally attached. Either way, it definitely felt unnatural. For example, Julia had been making eyes across the room with Caius for a bit, and the minute they take a walk into the garden and kiss, Julia is professing her love?? That doesn't make much sense to me. Though maybe Julia isn't the best example. There were two characters that stood out to me in this book: Julia and Hadassah. Right from the beginning, I knew Julia would be one of my least favourite characters to have ever read about, and that proved to be true. Throughout the story, I felt like I was watching the moral decline of Julia Valerian until at the very end, she once and for all became morally bankrupt when she turned on the one person who loved her unconditionally despite her many many many flaws. She was just so unlikeable!! As a matter of fact, I'm going to forgo going into too much detail on my thoughts of Julia, because thinking of her makes my blood boil, and I'm sure thats not the intention Francine Rivers had in mind when writing about her character. Rather, I think it best to think about her the way Hadassah does (though perhaps with a bit less love and fondness), and hope that there is a way for her to come of her path of destruction.

On to Hadassah, despite her at times not being in tune with peoples anterior motives, I think even that can be argued to be a strength. Everywhere she went, she brought peace, though I love that she wasn't even aware of that. Simply by trying to live as Jesus would, Hadassah touched many peoples hearts, though she felt as if she was letting God down by her fear of declaring herself a Christian. Hadassah has such a strength to her, having seen her entire family die, being taken from her home, her people murdered, a part of a hated race, Hadassah was still so grateful for everything she had and every small kindness shown to her. How could you not love a girl like that? The ending of this book really crushed me, but I understand its what is needed to bring other characters a bit closer to God.

On to matters of romance, I can't say I was too on board with Hadassah and Marcus. For starters, as a person of the 21st century, living in a place and time where the idea of slavery is absolutely abominable (to most people anyway), it was very hard to get over the subservient nature in which Hadassah was forced to enact. I also don't like how casually men hit women in this book, and Marcus hitting Hadassah was when I was just about ready to write this romance off. To me, something like that is absolutely unacceptable. I understand he was frustrated that she wouldn't deny God and simply wanted her to see reason so her life would be spared. But its really not something I can forget. And like I said before, the way Rivers writes about these romances is very quick and unfeeling. The characters see each other and suddenly they're in love. That doesn't make sense to me, which is why it was hard for me to get on board with it. If they had actually gotten to know each other a little better, then by all means I would be on board. Yet something about this relationship felt very incomplete.

On to Atretes; out of all the characters in this book, I think he by far had it worse. He really had to cut huge pieces of himself simply to earn back his freedom. But I found myself wondering what exactly the point of freedom would be if you have nothing left of yourself by the time you get it. I love the way Hadassah's kindness touched him, and I hope the scars around his heart heal.

The story line/plot of this book is excellent, though it was bogged down a bit by all the information I had to trudge through to get to what actually mattered. I really wasn't too interested in the technicalities of gladiators, or their roman religion, or the exact details of what the street looked like. But overall, it was definitely worth it.

A Voice in the Wind - Likewise Book Reviews

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