In the book of Daniel, there’s a reference that’s always intrigued me to a being called “a Watcher, a Holy One.” I think such beings are usually explained as some kind of angel. I suspect – though I’m not sure – that some characters in Mark W. Sasse’s Forgotten Child Trilogy may be meant to be the same kind of creatures, though here they’re not exactly angels.
A Parting In the Sky is the third and final book in the trilogy. Our protagonist, Francis Frick, a repentant arms merchant, does not actually do a lot in this volume, being confined to a hospital bed. The main characters are Ash, a “watcher,” and Hatty Parker, a young black woman who has become Francis’s friend and ally.
Another main character in the previous books, “Bee,” a sort of giggling fairy who loves pomegranates and blithely disregards the rules by which Watchers operate, also plays a diminished role. Bee is beloved both by Francis and by Ash, but she is banished from our world for her insubordination. However, in her absence Ash finds himself restored and strengthened, and he carries on her program for Francis and his friends, to the anger of his superior.
The wicked arms merchants against whom Francis and Hatty are now working are planning a major act of terror before fleeing the US with their ill-gotten gains. Hatty willingly surrenders herself to her enemies, trusting that the powers watching over her will use her to stop the evil. Things will work out in a way beyond anyone’s hope.
The Forgotten Child trilogy is as strange a series of books as I’ve ever read. I can’t claim that the writing is elegant or precise – Sasse doesn’t know how to use the word “myriad,” for instance, and he makes other errors of diction.
But I enjoyed the books immensely. There’s an innocence and simplicity there (worked into a very complex, globe-hopping plot) that pleases and delights.
They’re the kind of books that might be Christian, but the Christianity is obliquely expressed. There seems to be an argument about theodicy embedded in the story. I recommend these books.