My rating: 1 of 5 stars
I listened to this audiobook because I’ve been listening to the author’s podcast (the Naked Bible Podcast), and I have enjoyed it. Michael Heiser is a scholar in biblical studies and ancient near east culture, and his podcast focuses on biblical theology. If you are interested in in-depth study of Scripture, I highly recommend his podcast. It’s outstanding.
His fiction writing, on the other hand, leaves quite a bit to be desired. In my judgment, the novel is poorly written. It has all kinds of point of view problems (“head hopping”), there is a whole lot of telling and very little showing, there aren’t any interesting characters, the use of overuse of adverbs to describe dialogue becomes comical at times, the plot is difficult to follow, and, worst of all, I found the whole story boring.
I was also unimpressed with the narration. The reader has an amazing voice, but he seems to me like an over-actor. He makes the characters sound whiny and ridiculous.
On the other hand, I did find the book helpful. I didn’t read it to be entertained–I read it to get an idea of Heiser’s views about the sons of God in Genesis 6. And he does present his argument for his divine council view in the story. So that accomplished my purpose for listening through the book (although it would have been nice if I could have just skipped right to the chapter where all that is explained without having to suffer through the rest of it).
I think you can safely skip this book, but if you’re interested in biblical theology, or you just want some good scholarly studies of several books of the Bible, subscribe to his Naked Bible podcast. It’s outstanding.
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