Piercing the Darkness

Piercing the Darkness by Frank E. Peretti
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I remember when my mother purchased both books, This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness.  She tried to get me to read them when I was in high school but all the angels and spiritual warfare stuff really spooked me back then.  I snagged, Piercing the Darkness, from her house a few years ago and finally started reading it earlier this year.  I found it to be a slow read but I’m glad I stuck with it.

Lucy Brandon thought her daughter, Amber, had an innocent imaginary childhood friend when she acted out as Amethyst, the horse, but she was really possessed by a demon spirit. This “possession” propelled the forces of darkness into motion in the small town of Bacon’s Corner.  Peretti sets the story in motion quickly and then gives us the details through the middle. Tom Harris, director of the local Christian school, children has been taken by Child Protective Services and he has been charged with child abuse.  The child abuse charges does not stem from him abusing his own children but for spanking and trying to cast Amethyst out of Amber.  While all this is going on there is a background story and the main character is a mysterious woman named Sally Roe.  What happens to Sally Roe ultimately affects the outcome of things in Bacon’s Corner. The most intriguing part of the entire novel is how the ranks of angels and demons actually move the story along.

Peretti gives a lot of background and details so the middle of the story was kind of hard to work through.  There was always a lot of suspense and the ending was riveting! My favorite characters had to be the “angels.” It was so great how Peretti made them so diverse. They were of all nationalities. The names that Peretti gave the demons made you really think about how these evil spirits can infiltrate our daily lives. They had names like despair, insanity, destroyer, strongman, and many more.  Peretti made it real clear how effective the power of prayer can be when believers unify and cast away demonic imps such as “discord” and “gossip.”  We also saw how the spiritual wickedness really is in “high” places.

There were a lot of shocking revelations and moments in the text when you speed read to see what happens next. The most moving and beautifully written part for me was when Sally Roe came to know Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior.  At that moment, she found peace and confidence that she had been searching for for years.

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, and against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” – Ephesians 6:12


View all my reviews