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Vengeance Is Mine: The Luke Horn Saga Begins
It was 1863, America was split by war. Texas farmer and former lawman, Levi Horn is called to serve for the South, leaving his teenage son to watch over the family. A band of outlaws led by a revenge-driven escaped convict attacks Horn’s family and farm. Torn between vengeance and justice, sixteen-year-old Luke Horn sets off on the trail of the outlaws.
170 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 23, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
November 11, 2023
I worked at a Christian school for a few years that had this book on display in the small bookstore in the church. I walked past it for years, always thinking, "That looks really out of place among the Bibles and devotional books." For a reading challenge I was doing this year, one of the challenges was to read a book written by an Idaho author. So I decided to finally give it a try. I regret so much.
This book is despicable. It fails on every single level both as an enjoyable novel and as a Christian novel. I'll start by looking at its failings as a novel and then move on to the religious problems.
There is no way that this book was ever professionally edited. I question if it was edited at all. Articles were frequently either missing or added in where they didn't belong:
"...stretched atop a branch like raccoon in full sight..." (page 23)
"...aiming it at the Colson's chest." (page 27)
"I looked at the hat. It was quality hat..."(page 50)
"...I wrote out what I learned from the Mr. Prime."(page 64)
"...may have passed your way in past couple of weeks..." (page 129)
These are just a small sample. I became numb to it over the course of the book. Verb tense also changed between past and present so often that I'm not certain what the book was originally intended to be written in. As a single example, "I never recall hating anyone in my life, but I hated those six men with a passion that burned deep inside. Ever since that night, all I can think of is revenge." (Page 46) Just in those two sentences, the tense switches from present to past to present again, and on both ends of those sentences the book is in past tense. Misspellings were less common but still present:
"...with their tales between their legs." (page 23)
"...there was a since of relief..." (page 149)
Mistakes even stretch out across multiple words and even sentences:
"...I came across an old man camped by himself. 'Howdy! the camp. May I ride in?" (page 171)
"You have my permission to the exhume body from the grave..." (page 195)
"While the depraved culture, just outside the reach of Arkansas law, was abuzz with activity. The fort itself was all but abandon." (page 173)
These are just small samples of the quality of the whole book.
There are also bigger problems as well. Action will be interrupted by paragraphs or even pages of unrelated backstory. An entire section from pages 70 to 74 is simply Luke's shooting practice described in exact, pointless detail. We learn nothing about the character or his world. It's just there to talk about guns. Time seems to be highly flexible. At the end of the book it's said that the chase had taken two months, and I cannot figure out where that time went. Frequently it isn't even clear how many days pass between sections. Things just happen, or rather, we are told that things happen. The old adage, "Show, don't tell," is shot to pieces in this story. As just one egregious example, halfway through the book Luke meets a young lady and they sit down to a meal. The author then spends an entire page telling us what the conversation was about instead of letting the characters actually have a conversation. The author doesn't even let the characters tell us things; HE must tell us things.
The rest of the issues with the characters and story fall into the religious and moral problems with the book. I normally hate this term, but Luke is one of the most toxically masculine characters I have ever come across. According to Luke early on, he became a man overnight. He immediately grew up and took perfect responsibility for things. When his home and mother are attacked, he jumps into tactical action like a well-trained special operations soldier and not like a 16-year-old farm boy. He has virtually no emotion beyond hate, lust, and hunger. A couple of times he almost cries over the murder of his mother, but then quells it down to go get stuff done. There is no character development. The Luke at the end of the book is exactly the same as the Luke at the beginning: a cold, almost sociopathic fighter.
This would all make for a bad book, but the attempt to paint this as a clean, Christian book makes Vengeance is Mine despicable. This book is not clean. Yes, there is no swearing or sex, but it is quite bloody. Just because something isn't described doesn't mean it isn't violent. A man is shot in the head at one point and the bullet is described entering his forehead. In what world is this clean? The entire moral of the book - "'Vengeance is mine; I will repay,' saith the Lord" - is undermined by the plot of the book itself. A pastor shows up early in the novel to remind Luke that vengeance belongs to the Lord, punishment of crimes belongs to the state, and those who avoid punishment in this life will receive it in the next. Because of this, Luke vows to hunt down the murderers to ensure they are punished in this life. How do those go together!? The famous "turn the other cheek" passage is explained away as referring only to verbal attacks (I have no idea how) and the book ignores the verses only a little ways away in the Sermon on the Mount that state "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Nope, this manhunt isn't for vengeance, it's for justice, and that makes all the killing perfectly fine. There is no respect of human life in this book. Luke is a cold killer who feels nothing for the 9(!) people who die in this book, some by his own hand. I guess he feels bad about one of the deaths, but that's because the man was a friend. The rest were "evil men" who "made their choices" and left Luke and his gang "no other choice" but to kill them. Pathetic. Evil. Disgusting. Unbiblical. Sickening. Anti-Christian.
I thought for certain that Return of the Gods and The Eye of Argon would be the worst books I read this year for this reading challenge. This book blows Eye of Argon out of the "bad book" water (at least Eye of Argon had a focused plot) and gives even Jonathan Cahn a run for his money as the worst Christian author I have ever read.
This book is despicable. It fails on every single level both as an enjoyable novel and as a Christian novel. I'll start by looking at its failings as a novel and then move on to the religious problems.
There is no way that this book was ever professionally edited. I question if it was edited at all. Articles were frequently either missing or added in where they didn't belong:
"...stretched atop a branch like raccoon in full sight..." (page 23)
"...aiming it at the Colson's chest." (page 27)
"I looked at the hat. It was quality hat..."(page 50)
"...I wrote out what I learned from the Mr. Prime."(page 64)
"...may have passed your way in past couple of weeks..." (page 129)
These are just a small sample. I became numb to it over the course of the book. Verb tense also changed between past and present so often that I'm not certain what the book was originally intended to be written in. As a single example, "I never recall hating anyone in my life, but I hated those six men with a passion that burned deep inside. Ever since that night, all I can think of is revenge." (Page 46) Just in those two sentences, the tense switches from present to past to present again, and on both ends of those sentences the book is in past tense. Misspellings were less common but still present:
"...with their tales between their legs." (page 23)
"...there was a since of relief..." (page 149)
Mistakes even stretch out across multiple words and even sentences:
"...I came across an old man camped by himself. 'Howdy! the camp. May I ride in?" (page 171)
"You have my permission to the exhume body from the grave..." (page 195)
"While the depraved culture, just outside the reach of Arkansas law, was abuzz with activity. The fort itself was all but abandon." (page 173)
These are just small samples of the quality of the whole book.
There are also bigger problems as well. Action will be interrupted by paragraphs or even pages of unrelated backstory. An entire section from pages 70 to 74 is simply Luke's shooting practice described in exact, pointless detail. We learn nothing about the character or his world. It's just there to talk about guns. Time seems to be highly flexible. At the end of the book it's said that the chase had taken two months, and I cannot figure out where that time went. Frequently it isn't even clear how many days pass between sections. Things just happen, or rather, we are told that things happen. The old adage, "Show, don't tell," is shot to pieces in this story. As just one egregious example, halfway through the book Luke meets a young lady and they sit down to a meal. The author then spends an entire page telling us what the conversation was about instead of letting the characters actually have a conversation. The author doesn't even let the characters tell us things; HE must tell us things.
The rest of the issues with the characters and story fall into the religious and moral problems with the book. I normally hate this term, but Luke is one of the most toxically masculine characters I have ever come across. According to Luke early on, he became a man overnight. He immediately grew up and took perfect responsibility for things. When his home and mother are attacked, he jumps into tactical action like a well-trained special operations soldier and not like a 16-year-old farm boy. He has virtually no emotion beyond hate, lust, and hunger. A couple of times he almost cries over the murder of his mother, but then quells it down to go get stuff done. There is no character development. The Luke at the end of the book is exactly the same as the Luke at the beginning: a cold, almost sociopathic fighter.
This would all make for a bad book, but the attempt to paint this as a clean, Christian book makes Vengeance is Mine despicable. This book is not clean. Yes, there is no swearing or sex, but it is quite bloody. Just because something isn't described doesn't mean it isn't violent. A man is shot in the head at one point and the bullet is described entering his forehead. In what world is this clean? The entire moral of the book - "'Vengeance is mine; I will repay,' saith the Lord" - is undermined by the plot of the book itself. A pastor shows up early in the novel to remind Luke that vengeance belongs to the Lord, punishment of crimes belongs to the state, and those who avoid punishment in this life will receive it in the next. Because of this, Luke vows to hunt down the murderers to ensure they are punished in this life. How do those go together!? The famous "turn the other cheek" passage is explained away as referring only to verbal attacks (I have no idea how) and the book ignores the verses only a little ways away in the Sermon on the Mount that state "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Nope, this manhunt isn't for vengeance, it's for justice, and that makes all the killing perfectly fine. There is no respect of human life in this book. Luke is a cold killer who feels nothing for the 9(!) people who die in this book, some by his own hand. I guess he feels bad about one of the deaths, but that's because the man was a friend. The rest were "evil men" who "made their choices" and left Luke and his gang "no other choice" but to kill them. Pathetic. Evil. Disgusting. Unbiblical. Sickening. Anti-Christian.
I thought for certain that Return of the Gods and The Eye of Argon would be the worst books I read this year for this reading challenge. This book blows Eye of Argon out of the "bad book" water (at least Eye of Argon had a focused plot) and gives even Jonathan Cahn a run for his money as the worst Christian author I have ever read.
November 11, 2023
Oh boy do I love being instructed on how the story is going and how to feel about what the characters are doing! It is such a relief not to have to actually connect with the characters, think about what they are doing, or be entrusted to have the faintest idea of what is going on at all! It's great! Clearly, this author does not and cannot trust his readers to actually understand what is happening in the story, and half of the time what we are told to believe about the story is oftentimes the exact opposite of what the story literally says!!
This book is 50 shades of bad. Terrible plot, jerky pacing, inconsistent storytelling (early on the boy sets fire to the house, sees and knows that he set fire to the house, and a page later says the bad guys must have set fire to the house), bad writing, worse editing, and herky-jerky verb tense and points of view. One of the biggest parts of the plot makes literally no sense whatsoever unless you are one of the folks who believe that Princess Peach likes to be kidnapped by Bowser. The female characters in this story are abhorrently bad. The so-called social and racial commentary is so awful I would say it is even downright damaging, especially with the stereotypes. The historical accuracy is bad even for a fantastical idea of what the West was like during the Civil War. The questionable Christian lessons are so hamfisted as to be physically painful, and most of the time the character does exactly the opposite of the lesson, and the story treats this as a good thing? Every single character in this story is completely idiotic, especially the bad guys. They kidnap a woman and hold onto her for two months (I could only count maybe a month of time, but the book tells me it was two months) and they neither hurt her or manage to get away while the character makes the most painfully and awkwardly slow progress in the history of bounty hunts. That's just the single dumbest thing they do, and that doesn't even talk about the others.
Christian themes! Yeah, the theme of this book is that as long as you keep saying that it's justice and not vengeance, you can kill all the people you like. For a supposedly clean book (I guess "clean" only means no sexual themes or swearing), there are a total of nine deaths in this book, and at least seven of them are completely avoidable. There's not even an attempt to make any actual arrests. They just kill the bad guys. Except the last one, the leader, because that would be bad, while killing literally everyone else who crosses you... well, they earned that. They did that to themselves. The so-called redemption arc is more like a flat line. The dude is scared of our main character, so he decides to follow him instead of the other bad guys. He never even admits to being repentant for what he did. He's just siding with the stronger killer, and Luke is nothing but a cold-hearted killer. He never shows any emotion, none whatsoever, except a bit of anger. This is a 16-year-old boy who barely tears up when his mother burns alive in a house and doesn't even try to save her and barely bats an eye at shooting someone in the head when he supposedly hasn't ever killed anyone before. Not to mention all of his flashbacks with his father show the dad carefully training him to be an efficient hunter and killer of men, not just animals, and it's touted as a good thing. The girl he's interested in... well, that so-called romance is as backward as a mail-order bride. I hate to use the term as it is sorely overused, but this is Toxic Masculinity at its finest!On a
Christian level, this book has been tried and has been found wanting. On a romantic level, Twilight is a better example. On a Western level, best leave your cows at home than trust them to this book. On a story level, hand-holding is the name of the game. Finally, on a character level, I'd believe Dexter the serial killer to be a better role model. At least he has a better emotional range than a brick.
This book is 50 shades of bad. Terrible plot, jerky pacing, inconsistent storytelling (early on the boy sets fire to the house, sees and knows that he set fire to the house, and a page later says the bad guys must have set fire to the house), bad writing, worse editing, and herky-jerky verb tense and points of view. One of the biggest parts of the plot makes literally no sense whatsoever unless you are one of the folks who believe that Princess Peach likes to be kidnapped by Bowser. The female characters in this story are abhorrently bad. The so-called social and racial commentary is so awful I would say it is even downright damaging, especially with the stereotypes. The historical accuracy is bad even for a fantastical idea of what the West was like during the Civil War. The questionable Christian lessons are so hamfisted as to be physically painful, and most of the time the character does exactly the opposite of the lesson, and the story treats this as a good thing? Every single character in this story is completely idiotic, especially the bad guys. They kidnap a woman and hold onto her for two months (I could only count maybe a month of time, but the book tells me it was two months) and they neither hurt her or manage to get away while the character makes the most painfully and awkwardly slow progress in the history of bounty hunts. That's just the single dumbest thing they do, and that doesn't even talk about the others.
Christian themes! Yeah, the theme of this book is that as long as you keep saying that it's justice and not vengeance, you can kill all the people you like. For a supposedly clean book (I guess "clean" only means no sexual themes or swearing), there are a total of nine deaths in this book, and at least seven of them are completely avoidable. There's not even an attempt to make any actual arrests. They just kill the bad guys. Except the last one, the leader, because that would be bad, while killing literally everyone else who crosses you... well, they earned that. They did that to themselves. The so-called redemption arc is more like a flat line. The dude is scared of our main character, so he decides to follow him instead of the other bad guys. He never even admits to being repentant for what he did. He's just siding with the stronger killer, and Luke is nothing but a cold-hearted killer. He never shows any emotion, none whatsoever, except a bit of anger. This is a 16-year-old boy who barely tears up when his mother burns alive in a house and doesn't even try to save her and barely bats an eye at shooting someone in the head when he supposedly hasn't ever killed anyone before. Not to mention all of his flashbacks with his father show the dad carefully training him to be an efficient hunter and killer of men, not just animals, and it's touted as a good thing. The girl he's interested in... well, that so-called romance is as backward as a mail-order bride. I hate to use the term as it is sorely overused, but this is Toxic Masculinity at its finest!On a
Christian level, this book has been tried and has been found wanting. On a romantic level, Twilight is a better example. On a Western level, best leave your cows at home than trust them to this book. On a story level, hand-holding is the name of the game. Finally, on a character level, I'd believe Dexter the serial killer to be a better role model. At least he has a better emotional range than a brick.
May 14, 2018
LUKE HORN & FAMILY
A Texas family who are holding things together until the head of household returns from The War Of Secession aka Civil War. Levi Horn a retired lawman turned farmer has been conscripted into the Confederate Army. Luke and his sister Elizabeth, his mother who is one half Comanche and White. Luke Horn watched as a gang ruffians were in the house and holding his mother for information where was her husband and son. These men set fire to the house, leading everyone to think that his mother had died in the fire. This southern adventure has apt of details regarding how slaves were treated and people other than white were described using condescending descriptions. This also how a son went on the trail searching for the murderers of his mother. It's an interesting read it also contains a lot of Bible passages, who which Luke thinks about and applies to the hunt for these murderers. The ending leaves you wondering what's going to happen once Luke and his mother are United. Also I hope the author will tell us the name of Luke's mother instead referring to her as
"Ma" throughout the adventure.
A Texas family who are holding things together until the head of household returns from The War Of Secession aka Civil War. Levi Horn a retired lawman turned farmer has been conscripted into the Confederate Army. Luke and his sister Elizabeth, his mother who is one half Comanche and White. Luke Horn watched as a gang ruffians were in the house and holding his mother for information where was her husband and son. These men set fire to the house, leading everyone to think that his mother had died in the fire. This southern adventure has apt of details regarding how slaves were treated and people other than white were described using condescending descriptions. This also how a son went on the trail searching for the murderers of his mother. It's an interesting read it also contains a lot of Bible passages, who which Luke thinks about and applies to the hunt for these murderers. The ending leaves you wondering what's going to happen once Luke and his mother are United. Also I hope the author will tell us the name of Luke's mother instead referring to her as
"Ma" throughout the adventure.
August 20, 2018
A nicely written little western, quick-pace, good action and even a little romance. It’s also nice because it’s clean and has little scriptural lessons built in which is totally appropriate to the time and the genre of the novel.
April 24, 2021
CLEAN WESTERN
One of the things that I found to be most enjoyable about this Luke Horn Saga is the Christian perspective and frequent references to Bible scripture... This is a positive storyline with a great ending. RECOMMENDED
One of the things that I found to be most enjoyable about this Luke Horn Saga is the Christian perspective and frequent references to Bible scripture... This is a positive storyline with a great ending. RECOMMENDED
February 25, 2020
This is clean good action.
I loved every page of this good book.
I loved every page of this good book.
January 21, 2023
A BIG 5 For this one. As most other reviewers noted the clean dialogue and constant use of Scripture in much the decision making made this story quite enjoyable. Would certainly read more by Mr Rupp if able. Even when some of the outlaws lives were ended, the main character felt a touch of mortality and sadness for them. And another character started out questionable, but determined to change his outlook on life.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews