Gods & Kings

In her first installment of the rewritten and repackaged ""Chronicles of the Kings"" series, Austin (Fire by Night) paints an intriguing portrait of the young prince Hezekiah and his deteriorating kingdom of Judah from the biblical book of Chronicles. As the evil King Ahaz sacrifices his young sons in order to appease the monstrous god Molech, the High Priest Uriah condones the murders, seduced by potential power. Uriah decides to blend all religions into a new sort of worship (conservative Christian readers won't miss the contemporary implications). Hezekiah's grandfather, the prophet and recovering alcoholic Zechariah, teaches Hezekiah about Yahweh, but King Ahaz sends Zechariah into seclusion and Hezekiah soon forgets the God of the Jews. The pacing sometimes slows, and one cliched scene when Hezekiah's wife Hephzibah and her younger sister disguise themselves as servant girls has appeared in too many CBA novels. Austin is adept at walking the fine line of portraying the violent, barbarous times of the period-including the lives of women treated as sex objects and bartered property-without stepping on the toes of conservative readers. She leaves some plot lines dangling, such as Hephzibah's hopes to kindle romance in her marriage, presumably to be continued in the next installment. This is a promising start to a series that will acquaint Christian readers with some little-known biblical prophets and kings.