I love this book, I just barely re-read it and thought I'd give it a review.
Spoilers ahead:
The good:
Speaking from a member of the church's perspective, this book really does well at vocalizing the inner difficulties that exist as a member of the church. Everyone has doubts about what is true sometimes, everyone struggles being active, we all wonder if there is more we should be doing. Jim represents a very real member of the church with valid questions and frustrations.
The story is great too. The romance between Renae and Jim was very well done except for a few exceptions that I'll mention later on. The villains were great, conflict rises and falls masterfully, and the characters for the most part are very well done.
I frequently recommend this book to other members I know. It's my favorite book in the series, the first book hitting second. It was fun reading it growing up since I always wanted to go to BYU when I was older and Jim seemed like a cool BYU student. As of writing this review, I am a BYU student, and it was fun to re-read it with that context.
That all being said...
The bad:
I feel bad calling parts of this book bad, but after reading through it again after being exposed to a lot of other literature, I noticed some things that hopefully Heimerdinger eventually improved in his future characters (I read other books in the series past this one but I didn't like them as much)
This is a minor thing, but Jim's voice is a tad inconsistent. It always bugged me when I would read the first chapter because you get a sense that Jim has this accent where he says things like "if you don't let 'em cook...", "I ain't much of a cook", "this girl had been hittin' on me for weeks...." and you get a sense of how he talks. But for the majority of the rest of the book he maybe three times reverts back to that kind of voice. It was just strange to open up the book like that and then he actually isn't like that. Idk, I know I'm picky, and I'm probably biased too because I usually hate reading in the first person.
The next thing is that his characters don't react realistically to Jim's behavior. Obviously when he starts getting mad because he's getting effected by the sword and all, they're worried for him, and even push back against him to get him to calm down. But as you get through the book, it becomes apparent that he can't blame the sword for all of his behavior issues, but he's quite honestly a jerk some of the times. I'm not saying he shouldn't be and that he should be perfect, because characters need weaknesses, change and growth. But after the heated conversations, they kind of just immediately forget it happened after the fact. Renae smiles when he takes her hand one scene after he literally yelled at her. Yes she scowled right after he did so, but instead of letting him cool off and giving him space she reverts to square one as if he never did anything. I recognize this is really nickpicky, but I've got to explain why I only gave four stars (I promise I really really love this book!)
Last thing I'll say was that the ending and falling action were really fast. In the very last chapter he starts out talking to Antonio in Mexico, he meets up with Garth + the others, they go home, Muleki goes home, Christmas and finals happen, he sums up that he got married to Renae, and Jenny accepted Garth's proposal. All in one chapter. I'm selfish for wanting this, but I wanted more details about how the courting went with Renae after all of that. If I were Renae, I wouldn't have zoomed into marriage that quickly after Jim had been quite literally a jerk with outburst problems on the trip. Of course its probably inferred that they all figured things out after the trip and all, but it kind of felt as though Heimerdinger got to the climax and just wanted the book to end. Anyway, the falling action should have been spread more out in my opinion, but I just read books.
Anyhow, there you have it. If you actually read through to the end of my review, thanks for sticking with my rant haha. Go read it!!