“Then maybe you can tell me something else.  How is it that Elyon can allow evil to exist in the black forest? Why doesn’t he just destroy the Shataiki?”

“Because evil provides his creation with a choice,” the child said as though the concept was very simple indeed.  “And because without it, there could be no love.”

Black, a fiction book by Ted Dekker, the first book in the Circle series, is a powerful story about good and evil.  Thomas Hunter is a wannabe novelist, and has lived a decently normal life until a gang comes to Denver and tries to kill him.  After then, whenever Thomas falls asleep he dreams of a world that feels just as real as ours.  He can’t decide which world is real and which world isn’t, or if both are real. Thomas finds out that within three weeks a deadly virus will kill half, or possibly more, of the world’s population.  There is no vaccine or anti-virus, and the only person who can stop the evil man behind this is him.  The fate of the world is up to Thomas, even though he has already been killed, twice.
            This book was amazing.  It’s phenomenal how Dekker can make the two worlds collide.  Thomas can get killed in one world, and get saved in the other.  Dekker really showed how each character felt.  Both worlds were detailed extremely well.  You’ll feel like you are in the book because of all the detail.  He really makes the book interesting because the people in Thomas’ dream world have a unique religion called the Great Romance.  Their god is Elyon.  But instead of having a spiritual faith with Elyon, they have a physical relationship.  They can literally dive into a particular lake, and talk to Elyon.  I would recommend this book to anyone that enjoyed other Ted Dekker books, or if they like science fiction books, and fantasy books.