The Awakening by Jeffrey Pierce

What if everything you thought you knew was wrong?

We're taught in Sunday School that angels are benevolent beings who watch over us, who love and protect us at every turn. Yet the Revelation of John from the Christian Bible states that it is the angels who will pour out God's wrath on humanity, murdering billions of people. If you were an angel and truly loved those you watched over, could you destroy them, even if God commanded you to?

And if you couldn't, who would God send to do the job in your place?

Suspenseful, thrilling, and controversial, in The Awakening we find a world where nothing is quite what it seems, where the truth of spiritual reality has been distorted by millennia of folktales and mythology. While angels exist, they aren't what we believe them to be. They are the Old Ones, living among us from the time they were sent here, over 2,000 years ago, with a dark mission they chose to reject. Having fallen in love with mankind, some of the Old Ones work behind the scenes, teaching our great spiritual leaders while other immortals have entered into relationships with humankind, their angelic blood mingling with our own, manifesting in gifts widely considered to be psychic abilities and prophetic dreams.

Seamlessly weaving Hopi, Mayan and Christian prophesies with current events and the theories of quantum physics, The Awakening is a novel of the ending of a reality, of the reclaiming of a dimension that we call home. Told from a perspective beyond the filter of mythology, the beginning of the end is shown from a non-religious perspective while embracing the spiritual origins of our own existence.

I received a copy of this book free from the author.
What an interesting and different reading experience! This book is hard to categorize, as it seems to play between paranormal mystery and metaphysical fiction. What I can tell you, though, is that I had fun reading it.

I thought the plot was very clever, angels as bad guys, which is something we don’t usually see. The writing is pretty, and although I did find some errors, grammatical and typographical, they are by no means overwhelming.

The characters are quite different from the standard “good guys” “bad guys” that we’ve become so used to. In this book, the lines are blurred. One thing I do wish had been developed a bit more was the relationship between Alicia, one of the Old Ones, and Drew. We find them falling completely, obsessively, in love with each other, but we don’t see why, it just seems to happen from one minute to the next.

I loved the descriptions of Annchalla, the author’s depiction of Hell. There was something so malevolent about it without a blood-and-gore place, that I found myself shivering many times as I followed Drew and Alicia on their voyage into its depths.

The metaphysical discussions were also quite interesting. They do not overwhelm the plot, which is not an easy feat in metaphysical fiction. I was not bored by the discussions, actually, qquite the contrary. I found myself wanting to learn a bit more about the book’s version of the afterlife.

This book is a captivating beginning to what I’m sure will turn out to be a wonderful series. Now, go and find the thread.