Powers

Title: POWERS
Author: John B. Olson
Publisher: Broadman & Holman
December 2009
ISBN: 978-0-8054-4735-4
Genre: Inspirational/Suspense

Reviewed by Lundy Allan Hilton

“Bury me standing. I must be buried standing.” (from the back cover)


Mariutza is a sheltered Gyspy girl. She goes to visit her grandfather to make restitution for something she’d done to offend him. Ten cloaked men arrive on foot, and shots her grandfather. She gathers him into her arms, and dying, he utters a mysterious request.

When Mari helps to dig the grave for her grandfather, she hears something referred to as “the Badness” and she sees the same ten men die before her eyes. But even though the murderers are dead, the government and secret organizations seem to be chasing her to kill her, and her only hope is a prophet that her grandfather mentioned his bedtime stories.

Can Mari find this prophet before its too late? Does the prophet even exist?
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POWERS is the follow-up book to Mr. Olson’s Shade, thought it easily stands alone. The story does start slow, but then picks up the action where it caught my interest, but then it started dragging in the middle again.

The characters were very well developed, the setting is well described, and during the exciting parts I could almost envision the action. Olson is compared to Ted Dekker and Frank Paretti, both of whom are among my favorite authors, but I couldn’t get into Olson’s book.

Full of the supernatural, POWERS is for the nonscreamish. $14.99. 400 pages.