After the wars, after humanity has destroyed the world and civilization, after hope died and history was forgotten a soldier and a farm girl, fleeing from outlander savages, take refuge in a huge marble building somehow still standing these hundreds of years later and find a book that will change everything. The Sword The Cheveis Trilogy: Book 1 By Brian M. Liftin Read by Ray Porter Crossway / ChristianAudio.com April 2012 What Teo and Ana find is a Bible. The last section, the New Testament, is ruined by a leak in the seal but the first section, the Old Testament, is available and Teo sets to work interpreting it. What they find is a God unlike the lowly, angry and detestable gods currently worshiped in this post-apocalyptic world. One that is kind and loving and cares. This new God gains followers quickly and just as quickly gains the ire of the priestess of the demonic evil God of the Cheveis. It is so very rare to find a good post-apocalyptic world in Christian literature! Most of the time, it is Biblically unsupported theological guesswork about the end times like the Left Behind series or the Circle Series. In this book, Liftin does something no other current Christian author has done: created a fantasy world that doesn’t rely on our theology or eschatology and yet is true to the Word. He isn’t interested in pushing a particular theological agenda but keeps his characters, and God, on the straight and narrow by focusing on the basics that all Christians should believe, like the nature of God, the nature of the sacrifice of Christ (although this plays only a small part in book 1), and the nature of man as sinful. The book was well written and a fantastic large scale fantasy. The main characters are believable and develop naturally along the way – as does the author. Early in the book when I read about “milk maids” and how they blushed and fell for strong manly blah, blah I was so very tempted to toss the book in the (sorta) Historical Romance pile that I try to avoid. But Liftin’s language and the character’s speech improved and became more realistic as the story moved on. This is a great fantasy novel and I very much look forward to the next installment. A note about the audio book version: Porter does a serviceable job moving the story along with very few hitches. His characters have obviously different voices and the narrative was easy to follow because of his verbal aguility. My only complaint was in Teo’s voice as Porter seemed to buy into the romantic hero sterotype by giving Teo a almost too-manly deep voice. It was almost Gaston from Beauty and the Beast manly and distracting. The story was compelling such that I quickly learned to overlook and ignore it though.