The Tower — Book Review
Back in 2013, The Rain by Chris Skates and Dan Tankersley was published. It is a biblical historical fiction about Noah, his family, society at the time, and building the Ark. We were taken through the Flood and the eventual landing on the mountains of Ararat. The narration traded off from Japheth's first person account and a third person narrative. My review is here.
I did not know that the authors had written The Tower in 2014, so it was several years before I downloaded the ebook. First, I reread The Rain, then I got to this one. Both books use abundant artistic license, putting personalities and actions to names we see in Genesis while taking care not to overstep the truth of Scripture. Noah's wife and the wives of his sons are given names that are extrabiblical.
The Tower begins some years after the Flood. (The Bible does not mention Noah and his wife having additional children, which is highly unlikely). This book describes the families and that the earth is being repopulated, and biblical names are used as well as some for characters made for the sake of the story.
Remember the Curse of Ham? There was never any such thing, as the curse went to Canaan. While it was probably not just Noah getting angry over Ham's actions in Genesis 9:22 (there is much discussion among scholars that when that he told his brothers about Noah being drunk and naked, Ham did it in a mocking way), Skates and Tankersley made it a part of the story of how Canaan did something wicked and deserved the curse. In this story, he was already wicked.
We do not meet Nimrod until well into the book, and he sure seemed like a great guy. Then we saw his true tyrannical colors. (If you're inclined to read this book, I suggest you read "Nimrod: Hunter and Tyrant" and the linked article it contains just before the book. I found several things rather startling.) There are some speculations that the "hunter before the Lord" description meant that he hunted men, but that was not mentioned. It would have cluttered the story anyway.
The wording of Genesis 11:1-9 is not used directly, but the concepts are there. People were suppressing the truth about God, and they wanted their great empire under Nimrod. He was essentially encouraging atheism.
Skates and Tankersley manage to keep the reader's interest, and giving it 68 chapters allows easy places to pause reading for a while. The authors generated excitement, dread, anger — and a couple of places where there was brief but startling violence (but I felt that one guy got what was coming to him). A good story gets the reader involved, and that happened for me.
My main complaint is the editing. I bought my copy from Amazon, and reviews there were apparently for the paperback version. None of them mentioned the editing, but there are places in my ebook where spelling (very little of this), punctuation, paragraph breaks, and other things brought the story to a grinding halt for a moment, and I had to read through them. (I've encountered far worse in other books, such as several pages being repeated mid-chapter.) Hopefully, the paperback had better editing. It wasn't bad enough to make me quit and want my $5 USD back, and the story made up for those faults.
So, interesting and engaging. Despite a few things that may put off people who dislike artistic license and editing flaws, I say it's worth reading. Better yet, read The Rain first. By the way, I could use an editor for my own posts and articles.