Review for Elias's Fence by Anne Steinberg and Nicholas Tolkien

This is my review for Elias's Fence and the opinions expressed are my own and were in no way influenced by anyone or anything.

I was interested in this story because of the premise of an inanimate object being infused with evil and then spreading that evil outward.  It started out promising enough.  Elias is a blacksmith who is asked by the local convent to create a fence.  One of the nuns has been asked to be the model for the angels that will adorn the top of the fence.  But once the casting is done, the blacksmith decides that he wants more than just an image of the young nun.  He takes her in the most evil way possible and ends up killing her next to the fence that he'd just completed and stacked up.

The fence is erected and evil seems to breed and flourish within its confines.  Its then forgotten for about 100 years before being purchased by Christine Thorpe for her home.  The world of 2032 has become a scary place and shes wanting to keep the terror out and keep her family safe never known that shes actually keeping the danger inside.

The America of 2032 has been shaped by a man with a golden tongue and people have come to the conclusion that God is dead and have outlawed religion along with nearly everything else that hasnt been approved by Anderson Thorpe, a man who even has the ear of the President.  Drugs, chemicals, murder and mayhem are all present.

The story jumped around a lot and became hard to follow at times.  The characters were very one dimensional and it was impossible to really get to know any of them in any real sense.  It was almost like reading a graphic novel without the graphics.  You can picture the landscape and the action pretty handily, but you cant really get a handle on the characters and who they really are.

This book will probably appeal to a wider audience, especially those who are interested in dystopian fiction and the incarnation of evil.  Unfortunately this one wasn't for me, but I cant really say that the book was bad, more of a matter of taste.

Elias's Fence on Amazon