Book Beginnings on Fridays is hosted each week by Rose City Reader. It’s a chance to share the first sentence or so of the book you are reading this week. You can check out others’ book beginnings here. I’m also going to link up with Carrie at Reading Is My Superpower for First Line Friday.
This week’s book beginning:
Synopsis:
After her miraculous rescue by the angel Raphael, Sophia, daughter of Barabbas and Chanah, sets out with the former slave Onesimus to find the elusive and itinerant apostle John. Once they find him, an unexpected trip outside the Roman empire into the mysterious northern nation of Sarmatia expands her understanding of God’s global efforts to gather his children to their Savior.
It also reveals in starker detail the pernicious, pervasive attempts by the adversary to disrupt the work and turn the children of God toward evil and superstition. Pride is her own weakness, and she must learn how to temper and control it, so that her mind might be open to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
What surprises await her as she travels great distances with the Lord’s beloved apostle to spread the message of the gospel? How differently does God see her life than what she has assumed? What will happen to the growing church’s relationship with Rome when Emperor Vespasian dies and his sons pick up the mantle? And how does John continue to have so much energy and faith?
Prologue
This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
1 John 1:5
Sophia let the beautiful words of Onesimus’s prayer lap gently against her mind. He really was a wonderful, kind-hearted soul, and his understanding of the gospel surprised her more every day.
I understand that Christian historical fiction may not be everyone’s jam. But if that’s something you enjoy, I promise you, you will love M. D. House’s Barabbas trilogy, a fictional retelling of the life of Barabbas, the man who was released in Jesus’s place. Sophia is the story of one of the children of Barabbas, and it looks to be just as good.
Book Blogger Hop is hosted by Coffee Addicted Writer. It starts each Friday and runs through the following Thursday. Each week, there’s a new prompt featuring a book-related question. It’s designed to give bloggers a chance to follow other blogs, learn about new books, make new blogging friends, and gain followers. See what others have to say on this topic and link up your own post here.
How long does it usually take you to finish a book?
(submitted by Billy @ Coffee Addicted Writer)
It depends on the book! If it’s one that’s fast-paced and tense to where I have a hard time putting it down, I may burn through it in three or four hours if I have uninterrupted reading time. If it’s a high fantasy with a lot of world-building and detail or a work of non-fiction I really want to absorb, I may go a little more slowly. And of course, I seldom have huge chunks of time to devote solely to reading. Most of my reading is done in bits and pieces during the day and before bed. So realistically, if it’s a book I can get through quickly without losing my enjoyment of the story, I can read it within two or three days.
That being said, before kids (many years ago), I once read seven books from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon. That was a good weekend.
I have not read this author before. I hope you enjoy it.