ETERNITY’S EDGE

The second in this religious fantasy series offers an inventive premise and evocative imagery but a surrealistically convoluted plot. Nathan Shepherd has barely escaped the malevolent Mictar’s latest assault, but he and his surviving friends across three parallel dimensions are still determined to rescue Nathan’s parents and stop the looming “interfinity” from destroying them all. They manage to invade the home dimension of the demonic “stalkers” and find unexpected allies, while being forced into increasingly difficult choices and painful sacrifices. It’s not the details that matter, but Nathan’s complicated character—courageous, talented, hewing to a near-pathological moral rigidity, yet both ferociously honest about his own failings and open to the good in others. If readers have trouble keeping track of the characters’ various dimensional analogs, they can still appreciate the painterly depictions of strangely warped realities, and especially the soaring paean to the transformative power of music. The religious themes are explicitly evangelical Christian, but rarely heavy-handed; nor does Davis gloss over difficult implications. Not for everyone, but a good choice for thoughtful readers with a taste for the Baroque. (Christian fantasy. YA)