Book Review – Penance By Paula Richey

I was very interested in reading this book after hearing about it from Periapsis Press. Set it a world of superheroes and aliens, a young woman struggles to break free of her old life and written with Christian themes without being “cringe Christian fiction” or “current day female protagonist”.

Only The Penitent (Wo)Man Will Pass
Following Penance as the main character is what makes this book. To say she’s not the “shave half her head and be against evil men” would devalue the writing of such a well-rounded character. She’s written like a real person who is a “free” prisoner, forced to do the bidding of the bad guys, and the psychological torture (along with physical) makes her feel like a trafficked person you’d read about in the news. Her growth as a person is within her character and any change is met with resistance and struggle just like a real person would experience. A dramatic change happens “off-screen” and while some people may have wanted to read about that it doesn’t launch into the schmaltz Christian fiction camp. Sanctification is the focus as that’s clear just from the title of the book.

Behind Every Good Woman
The alien soldier Kail is an equally interesting character. He’s a “bastard” alien within his own world who views everything from the cultural perspective of accruing debt and paying off debt. Here is where Richey and Plutarch could have very easily hammered the schmaltz and had the main character could have a vasaline-washed lens scene where she preaches to him about how there is “One who can take away all his debt”. Trying not to do the “it’s like this book” but it’s a similar fashion to Jean Valjean and Javert in Les Mis’. You don’t need to be told one is Grace and the other is the Law. Kail has equal moments of growth and background reveal that makes him interesting and there are times where more of Penance and him interact to flush out more of each other.

The “adults” in the story are also well-rounded. Military-minded heroes have stoic personalities where they feel like NPC. However, so little is focused on them that other than a couple who interact the most with Penance, they feel very underdeveloped to figure out their place in the world. More on that below.

Look Up In The Sky!
The main plot is great. I get it and it’s very straightforward in the best way possible. I just didn’t understand the world enough. It’s a world of superheroes but only really one, Justice, is seen. There’s talk about other “Primes” but when alien invasion occurs no one else is seen (the Marvel extended TV universe where you don’t understand why IronMan or Captain America doesn’t show up since everyone is in NYC). There are also aliens and the Earth is in a planetary alliance but they don’t care about invasion or kidnappings occurring between worlds. I didn’t quite get what the entire world really looked like or was made up of. I think the Justice is kind of like Green Lantern where he’s the policeman of the Earth sector?

The biggest issue I had was when many of the scene changes. They felt drastic and it was slightly difficult to figure out where we were at or what was going on. For example, early on, Penance shows up at the stadium the aliens are attacking. I wasn’t sure how this was related to her or what was going on. The aliens also seem to be focused on obtaining supplies but they hook up a hose for water and grab stuff from the stadium. That seemed very low-key for holding a stadium of people hostage. These drastic scene changes happens a number of times and I was confused for a number of pages and it became distracting.

The Hero We Need
But, let me not distract the possible reader from turning down the book as this was a worthwhile read. Penance is a great character and following her story was interesting and a great investment. This is how to write real, broken characters who grow. Richey and Plutarch wrote a real super, hero story. Now THAT’S shmaltzy.