Showdown+Anna+Lobianco

Showdown by Ted Dekker
=__Rating__= 5 stars

=__Showdown__= From within the deep, forbidden catacombs of an old monastery, three children find a kind of power that no one knew could have existed. A group of highly intelligent orphans have grown up in the walls of the monastery and been taught away from any outside contact since they were babies, but now all that work is starting to unravel as three kids unearth a hidden library and decide to wreck havoc with the power they find in the books. Coincidentally, the chaos of the monastery begins at the same time a strange priest shows up in a town nearby, Paradise, Colorado. Except this priest doesn't bring a message of hope... But of an impeding doom which he himself will bring. Only one child in the town sees behind his salesman grin, and into his twisted intents. Johnny Drake has the will to stop Marsuvees Black, and that's all he needs in order to succeed in this story. As the plot unfolds, the two stories slowly wind together, so that each's fates depend on one another... If one fall's to darkness, so does the other. And slowly the number of people willing to change that are diminishing...

= = =__Review__= Showdown by Ted Dekker is, without a doubt, one of my favorite books. The story is gruesome and twisted, but that only adds to the effect of it all. The battles between good and evil definitely turned my knuckles white, and, although Ted Dekker can be wordy sometimes, I feel like he still does an excellent job of giving the reader a metal image of how things look in the scene. Not only that, but he is also incredible at giving you an image of what a person is feeling in a certain moment. He makes the antagonist seem unforgivably evil, and the protagonist you definitely feel is the hero of it all. There is the occasional bit of humor, but it is usually interrupted with another bout of action. If you enjoy suspense and a completely new idea for a story... This book is for you. Over all, I deeply enjoyed this book, and could honestly reread it many times, which I have found I can only do with a handful of books. And even outta those few books, this one is on top.