#REVIEW: AD 30 by Ted Dekker

Title: A.D. 30

Series: none

Author:  Ted Dekker

Published Date: October 28^th, 2014

Publisher: Center Street Publishers

Format: hardback

Pages: 432

ISBN:  9781599954189

Genre: Christian fiction

Add to: Goodreads

Purchase: Amazon

Rating: 4 stars

Synopsis: A sweeping epic set in the harsh deserts of Arabia and ancient Palestine.

A war that rages between kingdoms on the earth and in the heart.

The harrowing journey of the woman at the center of it all.

Step back in time to the year of our Lord...A.D. 30.
The outcast daughter of one of the most powerful Bedouin sheikhs in Arabia, Maviah is called on to protect the very people who rejected her. When their enemies launch a sudden attack with devastating consequences, Maviah escapes with the help of two of her father's warriors--Saba who speaks more with is sword than his voice and Judah, a Jew who comes from a tribe that can read the stars. Their journey will be fraught with terrible danger. If they can survive the vast forbidding sands of a desert that is deadly to most, they will reach a brutal world subjugated by kings and emperors. There Maviah must secure an unlikely alliance with King Herod of the Jews. 

But Maviah's path leads her unexpectedly to another man. An enigmatic teacher who speaks of a way in this life which offers greater power than any kingdom. His name is Yeshua, and his words turn everything known on its head. Though following him may present even greater danger, his may be the only way for Maviah to save her people--and herself.

My Review: I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This was a fascinating book. From the very beginning, you are pulled into Maviah’s world, the world of a single mother full of shame, just for being born a woman, and for being born to a woman of lesser status than her father. A world where violence rules, and the innocent are destroyed in its wake.

And yet, somehow, no matter what her father feels for her, she is pushed into an adventure to ally herself and her people with Herod, the same Herod at the time of Jesus’ death. Maviah meets an unexpected ally in Herod’s wife. One of her father’s warriors, Judah, is adamant about meeting this Yeshua, the mystic who he believes could be the long-awaited Messiah of his people.

I love reading fictionalized accounts of meeting Jesus like this. The author does such an extraordinary job of bringing this, so it feels like the reader is actually there, meeting Jesus as well. You get to feel what it must have felt like when someone else met him for the first time, what kind of personality he had, things that you don’t get out of the dry reading of the Gospels.

I hope the author continues this into a series.