Review: Visions of Power by Jeffrey Quyle (Books)

Visions of Power by Jeffrey Quyle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I started reading this myself and ended up getting into a bedtime routine with my kids by reading this to them. The book is pretty good for kids except for the fact that there are plenty of times where even I had a hard time understanding what was meant by a particular part of the prose. Many times large words are used and makes it a bit hard for the kids to understand those things as well there were just times where the sentence itself was just hard to understand... then again they would ask questions and learned more due to it.

Personally I found the book a bit too long for what actually happened. I found that the introduction to the 'mythical' beasts at the start of the book was way overdone for what we got to learn through the story. I think... more rumors and less impending doom at the start would have helped that, although that change also may have made the beginning a bit boring as well. I found it odd that every moment at the start they ran for their lives, then suddenly they were able to just stop and start living in a town without much care in the world. I thought at any moment they would be attacked, but no.. that did not occur. Maybe there is a very good explanation that I missed, or that will become apparent in later books (it is an extensive series) that explains the apparent stopping of the attacks.

I certainly like the spiritual implications in the story. A world that looks at prayer as a recreational thing and someone that gets the wild hair to really start effectively using it in healing and such. Very cool story of a rekindling in faith for all those around Alec as he called for things that were effective yet scoffed at from the start.

Alec's rise to power was interesting... parts slow that I thought could have been quicker and as well vice versa for others. One thing in particular that I was tired of reading (keep in mind I read most all this book aloud to my children) was the very detailed accounts of healing others. Very hard words and as well very repetitive things in each instance. A few were certainly important for the story at hand, but others either just created unanswered questions or just did not matter enough to be as detailed as they were.

The first section of the book really pulled me in, when they got to Goldenfields I began to get very bored of the story, until the last few chapters as Alec began to deal with political (these seemed to come from no where, but in the end all made sense even in the fact that Alec was surprised by them as well, truly I liked it this way even if all of it annoyed me due to the trouble it caused Alec) and extreme growth in power creating totally other political problems as well. Without those chapters I may not be as interested in future books, and as will I must admit when I finished and mentioned to by daughter that I was done with the first and that there was just an excerpt from the second book left; she immediately said "Ok, get the second then".

So, even though there were times I just wanted to quit reading and then rushed through just to finish... I can certainly see myself getting the other books and reading them to my kids as well.


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