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Resurgent by Tina Riffey is a science fiction short story about a society decades after a holy war and genocide. The Death Cult have been wiped out for 70 years, or so the Church thought. Our Heroine Sara is set on ensuring the demise of the Church. The main conflict of the story is between Sara and the High Priest, however, there are undertones of a war of gender and the importance of morality.
The driving force with this book is the journey through the night for a challenge Sara has been summoned to attend. This journey really entices the readers because of the hurdles she faces along the way, especially because of her history. The characters in this story are well developed but I would have loved to have seen more of it so the relationships could be further developed. This book would work brilliantly as a TV show.
The main weakness I found with the book was that the writing style was clearly still premature and a little more time could have been put into tidying up the writing. For example, there is precious little dialogue in the book, meaning it is filled with description and soliloquy from the protagonist. This is partly understandable because the protagonist is in a very isolated position, but sometimes I think dialogue would have excited the writing a little more.
On this note, there was one instance where the author used the phrased “danced away” about 6 times in the space of a couple of pages, just to prove my point that perhaps the text could have been read over once or twice more.
When it comes to positives, I will say that this is a very good book to start and finish in one day if you wish for a simple, wholesome story about the rights and wrongs in the world. While I think the book had a little too much of a focus on an anti-cult/religion stance, the setting of good vs evil and a world that is at a huge turning point in its existence is very engaging.
To add to this, I welcomed the fact that the protagonist was female, but without it being huge character focus. Despite a comment about her gender, her skills, knowledge and place in the story was never undermined, in addition to their being no love interest, which was a welcomed change for me! The purpose was purely to help develop the world – an aspect which I find is often lacking in short stories, where there is often the attempt to interweave several story lines, often resulting in little development in any of them.
Overall, this book is a nice and easy read for most people ages 12+. The wholesome friendships and the intriguing story line are brilliant, and I would recommend this book to anyone.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐/5