Outlaw

Just finished Outlaw. I like the Circle series so much, that when Amazon notified me that he just came out with Outlaw, I jumped on it and thought I’d give it a try.I’m giving it 2 out of 5 stars, and that’s being generous.(sigh)Okay, first off, I know that he’s a Christian writer, and most of his books deal with different levels of theology in intense drama/action settings, so I knew to expect that going in. The Circle series had some religious undertones to it, but it wasn’t overly thick with it. Outlaw, however, (especially toward the end) was paragraph after paragraph after paragraph of overly descriptive, forced, dry “bible thumping” that had me rolling my eyes and thinking “Oh, right – of COURSE the savage, native tribe members, tens-of-thousands of them all gathered behind their ruthless leader stopped mid-chant during the burning ceremony and all started crying and immediately changed their evil ways, because the protagonists willed them to ‘see the light’, and forgave them of their transgressions, etc.” (sigh) I know the agnostic in me fuels that quite a bit (not immediately following along), but it really was just ridiculously over-the-top. I mean – 90% of the book is building up to how impenetrably hateful and violent these indigenous people are, and their unyielding laws they have to live by, and how these white foreigners are “called” in to bring these savages salvation by helping them to see the light. It was just so chokingly cliché. In the last chapter, just all-of-a-sudden right at the climactic point in the action, everything just “magically” works out, and they all stop and are suddenly terrified and humbled and drop to their knees crying, and the ruthless tribe leader who kills people just to prove a point and keep everyone loyal to him out of pure fear “didn’t come out of his hut for days and days, but rather stayed inside, weeping.”I had to FORCE myself to finish it, just so I could say “Yeah, I finished it.” But, even though some of the story content was a little hard to swallow, what really killed it for me was the writing style. The best way I can sum it up, is that it was the literary equivalent of having your mind read you a story exactly like Ben Stein would. Dry…monotone…plodding unchanging pace…choppy, short sentences, etc. Not to mention that everything – EVERYTHING – that happened to the two protagonists was so extreme – the descriptive writing was just inundating, and it got so washed out very early on that I really had to choke down the words to continue. It was such an incredible letdown after the wonderful Circle series.I immediately hit “Remove from my device” as soon as I was done with it.

If I hadn’t heard Ted Dekker speak in person at the re:Write conference in Austin, TX, I probably never would have picked up this book. I like to read true stories and prefer a good dose of probability if not historicity in my fiction. To the casual reader, Outlaw, delivers neither.The first 21 chapters follow Julian, a lonely, unattached, single mother perplexed by a mysterious song in a repetitive dream. Feeling as if she has nothing to lose, Julian and her two-year-old son, Stephen, leave their home in Atlanta in search of the dream’s source, its meaning. And here the story opens, with Julian and Stephen “tossed about like a cork on a raging dark sea off the northern tip of Queensland in 1963”.A sudden storm capsizes the boat, taking the captain under with it. Julian is rescued alone by three indigenous warriors representative of three tribes collectively called the Tulim, living in a jungle valley by the same name. Briefly, Julian clings to the hope that she will escape or be freed and return to her homeland. But, she also wonders if life without her son is worth living. Perhaps she would rather die at the hand of uncivilized strangers.Julian never goes home.I won’t wreck the story by divulging details, but I will try to explain the feelings that, Outlaw, evoked in me.Most nights, I put the book aside determined not to pick it up again. I wasn’t drawn in. I didn’t identify with Julian. The jungle setting and depictions of tribal life seemed to stretch my imagination. But somehow, perhaps a bit like Julian’s winsome melody, Outlaw, held some magnetic power over me.Outlaw’s obvious themes are sacrifice and redemption. But what captivated me was Dekker’s description of humanity. Through key characters, Dekker reveals his perception of human bodies as costumes, our immortal spirits as our true selves and the freedom that comes from internalizing this truth. I could almost taste a new freedom; personally feel chains and inhibitions fall away as his characters progressively released their fears of pain, loss and loneliness and embraced the all-sufficiency of The Father.A few things marred my appreciation for this book. Three characters seemed to simply disappear without proper closure and the demise of one seemed unnecessary and slightly outside of the narrative’s flow. Secondly, in the final chapters, it is a little difficult to discern between what is happening to flesh and blood characters and what might be happening to them postmortem in their eternal existence.As for the narrative seeming a little far-fetched, the Author’s Note explains it was in fact realistic, however outside of the average reader’s experience. Dekker was raised the son of missionaries in the jungles of Irian Jaya. He lived among a tribe of cannibals called the Dani tribe. I particularly appreciated this revelation as it lent authenticity to the story instead of simple, wild imagination.[...]