When I encounter a poorly written Christian novel, I tend to assume it comes from an Evangelical Protestant author. As an Evangelical Protestant myself, it’s one of the things I have to live with. I instinctively expect better things from Roman Catholic writers, probably because I mostly read good ones (Undset, Buckley, etc.) Nevertheless, there are badly written Catholic novels, and Michael Stewart’s The Hills Be Shaken turned out to be one of those. Which isn’t to say the author doesn’t show some promise.

The premise is original and engaging. An act of terrorism destroys a large swathe of Manhattan, Kansas. Just before the explosion, police officer Sam McGuire stops a woman who’s jogging in the park, carrying (legally) a pistol and an AR-15. Though she seems to have no connection to the disaster, Sam can’t shake a feeling that something was off about her, and he studies his dash cam footage of the incident obsessively.

Immediately after the event, engineer Moses Haley was arrested by the FBI, simply because he happened to be taking a break on the roof of his workplace at the fatal hour. He was soon released, little guessing that he’d soon be recruited by that same agency. His new career will put pressure on his family life and demand courage of him he never knew he had.

My reaction: First of all, I did finish the book. I don’t always do that. The plot was interesting enough (though far-fetched), and kept me interested. I liked the characters. The values were good.

But the writing was amateur hour. All the characters talked the same way, and they spoke like someone writing a book, not like real people talking. The religious passages were awkward, too long, and preachy. The action (as in so many novels nowadays) was more cinematic than realistic.

Also there was a long sequence involving action in a very high place, with an escalating danger of falling. I hate scenes like that for personal reasons, though it certainly kept my interest.

Anyway, The Hills Be Shaken was an admirable story, awkwardly told. But we might look for better things to come from the author.