I decided to spend some time this summer reading just for fun. The “Fiction” folder on my Kindle has been a great source of books for this.
I download Kindle editions throughout the year when they catch my eye for whatever reason. When I get around to reading them, I often don’t remember when I got them or why. The Fourth Kingdom by Alexandra and Joyce Swann is one such.
The Fourth Kingdom by Joyce Swann
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
In The Fourth Kingdom the Swanns combine a world of genetic engineering and cloning with a couple of brilliant professors, some Nazi Germany diehards, and a Christian home-school family to craft a dystopian world that pits evil against good—the New Mexican Doppelganger Center versus Missouri’s Cornucopia; Dr. Karl Helmick versus Dr. Alexander Sinclair; Helmick’s son Josef versus the Sinclairs’ twins Joshua and Jarrod. As unnamed but palpable evil advances on the Sinclairs we sense this will be a fight to the death.
The plot is a combination of science fiction and biblical prophecy. It drew me in to a world that I found both fascinating (for its scientific possibilities) and repulsive (for its potential for ruthless badness).
Though the writing was clumsy in some places (heavy-handed description, dialogue laced with backstory that sometimes devolved into outright lecture), I quite enjoyed this book’s black-and-white characters, speculative setting, and surprising story line.
The Fourth Kingdom ends with several loose ends yet to tie up. The Force, Book 2 in the two-book The Kingdom Chronicles series, beckons.
Violet Nesdoly 