Ever been afraid of that sound you heard at night when you were alone? Have you ever been certain someone was watching you from the shadows? Remember the way your gut feels at those moments? James Byron Huggins does, and he can capture those moments on paper to make them last forever.
If you like thriller-based fiction, you're going to be hard pressed to find someone more suited for it than James Byron Huggins. He's put out more consistently top-quality novels than any other Christian fiction author in recent years. As a matter of fact, his short trip into mainstream fiction with the novels Cain and Hunter found their movie rights purchased by Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone respectively.
After a two-year hiatus, Huggins is back with Nightbringer, and the story is worth the wait. A group of tourists are visiting a monastery in Europe inhabited by a small number of rather suspicious-looking monks. While there, a snow storm sets in, trapping them for several days. Then something goes terribly wrong, and they realize that they are not alone. Something is stalking them...something evil patiently waiting to kill them all. As the story progresses, we find that even the monastery itself hides a terrible secret.
Borrowing heavily from his earlier novels Cain and Hunter, Huggins works beautifully in creating a no-win scenario for his characters by pitting them against an apparently unstoppable foe in a hostile environment. This time around it's one of the Nephilim mentioned briefly in Genesis, having survived for centuries with a thirst for blood and death. There are several characters in the monastery, all with their own secrets and hidden pasts. One of the monks mentions the story of Cassius, the centurion who according to legend found grace at the foot of the cross and protected Christ's body until it could be taken down. Because of that, he was given by God the task of protecting His children until Christ returns, becoming the Wandering Jew of legend-and a warrior at heart who stalks the surviving Nephilim through the centuries. When a mysterious member of the group named Michael fearlessly takes on the creature and puts it on the run, the others are faced with a new question: Is this Cassius himself?
I love the way James can take an intriguing creature mentioned in the Bible (as he did so beautifully in his novel, Leviathan) and weave an entire story around it by creating a seemingly valid explanation for its existence. I have to admit I thought at the beginning of this story that James was beginning to lose his touch by telegraphing something a little too much and seeming to drag out an obvious fact. I should have known better. The "I know where you're going with this" mindset will do you no good here, as James pulls a great plot twist out of this one (and I'm not going to explain any further about that...I don't want to spoil anything for you). Stories like this are the reason he remains my favorite Christian author. There is no slow point in this tale, and once the creature reaches the monastery, just go ahead and clear your schedule as there's no place to put the book down.
My only complaint is the story's length. It's the shortest book he's written in years (easily less than half the size of his previous book, Rora). I wasn't robbed of anything in the story because of it; I was just having so much fun reading it I hated to see it end! Maybe this means he'll start cranking out more stories now since they're shorter (which is fine by me!).
All in all, this novel stands easily beside anything out there today. Huggins has a gift for storytelling, and this book has a permanent place on my bookshelf beside his other novels. I rank this as the best novel I've read this year and can't wait for his next.
Please write faster, James!
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