Review: A Step of Faith

A Step of Faith by Richard Paul Evans

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Maybe these books aren't meant to be read one after another. I find myself catching up on The Walk series after being away from it for the past two years. Evans' fifth book has been released, and I realized I was now three books behind in my reading. So I grabbed books number three and four and have just finished the fourth one.

I'll repeat what I mentioned in my pithy review of the third book: if you liked the others, you'll like this one. The same goes for book four. They're all the same. Alan Christopherson walks, he eats, sleeps, tells engaging little factoids about the small towns he walks through. You know, your basic travelogue. It gets kind of tedious to read, if truth be told.

The books barely move the overall story arc along, and I think that is a mistake. Maybe Evans has forgotten the rule about writing: never assume that your readers have nothing else to read and that they'll plod along with you as you meander through your story. Not so, in most cases, and I would assume that goes double, triple and quadruple if your writing a series. In fact, I would hazard a guess that due to the sequential narrative nature of a series, a writer would exponentially lose readers as the series progresses. Be that as it may, the entertainment value has diminished enough that book number five will be my last in this series.

Evans is a really good writer. I just wish there was more substance to this series, that's all. I'll definitely keep reading his other writing, just not this series.

To its credit, A Step of Faith did resolve the cliffhanger at the end of book three, but it also included a bizarre episode between a cult leader and Alan. What I got from the odd encounter was that, once again, Sola Scriptura is to be avoided at all costs. And I seriously doubt that Richard Paul Evans (a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - LDS) was intentionally supporting the Catholic position on this doctrine. So, having been educated in the eighties (i.e., courses in semiotics, hermeneutics, interpretation theory, etc...), I was distracted at this point in the narrative by my quest to find the textual subtext(s).

My best guess is that the cult leader is some fictional representation of a theological axe that Evans feels the need to grind - either in support of some LDS doctrine or some other more personal issue. I don't know, and I don't plan on becoming either an LDS scholar or Richard Paul Evans' biographer just to find out the answer. I'm quite comfortable living with the mystery.

One more thing, regarding the tediousness: I suppose it never occurred to either Evans or his editor that the character Alan would have to repeat his story ("my wife broke her back and died a month later from an infection, while I was caring for her my business partner and BFF stole my business, I lost my house, my cars, my wife, everything...") to every new person he meets on his walk. I don't know what the answer to this literary problem might be, but repeating the story, however abridged Alan makes it, gets very annoying.

So, to sum up, A Step of Faith moves Alan's narrative along, although it seems to match his walking pace. If you've got nothing else to do and nowhere else to go, you might as well read this one too.









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