Futuristic speculative Christian fiction is rare, and Brouwer (Broken Angel
) does it with the skills of an episodic storyteller that make a reader wonder when the movie is coming out. In a postapocalyptic setting, people live in their cars, called “soovies,” the government has runaway power, and social classes are stratified into Influentials, Industrials, Illegals, Invisibles. When Caitlyn, an Invisible whose life was a government DNA experiment gone bad, breaks free, she is pursued by a bounty hunter for the Influentials. What's darkly horrifying about the book is the plausibility of the story, built on world conflicts in which water causes war, ethicless DNA testing turns a profit, and immigration is intended to create a labor class bordering on slavery. With vivid character description and fascinating details (implanted credit card chips in the finger tips are used for purchases), Brouwer paints a fierce future. The world as he sees it could decay to this dismal degree without the redemption found in the Judeo-Christian ethic and renewed democracy that puts power under people rather than over them. (May)
