How long has it been since I recapped one of these books? Five years.

Initial Thoughts: It’s been so long since I recapped the first book in this series that I had to go back and reread it. I now remember who the characters are (yay!) and how much I hate the strain of Christianity that dismisses every other belief system as literally evil (less yay).

Recap: Becka’s first date with Ryan consists of going to hear a lecture by a guy who claims to be reincarnated, because “The Ascension Lady” gave Ryan the tickets. That’s…a really odd choice, particularly for a Christian whose brother has already had a run-in with the occult kids’ group who frequent The Ascension Bookstore. I mean, I used to love New Age bookshops, but I’d still have been weirded out if a guy asked me to see David Icke or something.

But the plot of this series requires Becka and her brother to keep toying with the supernatural, so here we are.

On the way to the lecture, Ryan takes a detour to literally the wrong side of the tracks so they can condescend to a kid named Pepe. Becka hilariously thinks she’s going to be human trafficked because Ryan doesn’t tell her why they’re detouring, but nope, she’s just going to have a heartwarming encounter with a whole legion of after-school-special stereotypes:

As Pepe arrived and high-fived Ryan, he gave Becka the once-over. “¡Qué bien!” he said with a mischievous grin, winking at Ryan.

Ryan laughed. “English, my man. Talk English.”

Pepe turned to Becka. “I said the pretty lady is almost as beautiful as what he’s been bragging about.”

Becka felt her ears grow hot from the compliment. She threw a glance to Ryan. He seemed as calm and unflustered as ever.

“How’s your mom?” Ryan asked.

Pepe shrugged.

“No change?”

Another shrug. “The doctors, they say if she doesn’t keep taking her medicine, she’ll get a sickness they can’t cure.”

p. 6

Also, Pepe lives right next to something called the Death Bridge, so don’t get attached to him.

It’s called that because kids play a version of chicken that involves standing on the track as a train approaches, barreling towards them at high speed like the very predictable train-bridge subplot that you can already hear thundering in our direction, dear reader.

In our B plot, Scotty is still getting computer messages from Z, and also still being awful about Darryl, his supposed friend.

Holy crap, the ignorance is off the charts:

Becka had never given much thought to reincarnation. As far as she figured, it was just another one of those weird Eastern religions where people were afraid to kill a cow because it might wind up being their great-grandmother or something.

p. 14

Also, friendly reminder: don’t let professional grifters hypnotize you.

Becka can’t hear me, though, so she does, and relives being guillotined. Maxwell, the hypnotist, talks to her after the show to provide aftercare, suggesting plenty of rest, some aspirin, and chamomile tea. He also gives her his number and wants to visit her family. His vibe is midway between a BDSM creep and an encyclopedia salesman.

“Yes,” Becka said, remembering her manners. “It was a –“

“No, Rebecca,” Maxwell spoke with such authority that both Becka and Ryan stopped and turned. Maxwell remained at the door, smiling broadly. “The pleasure was mine.”

p. 33

At breakfast Becka doesn’t tell her brother about the lecture, because she knows Scotty won’t approve. She also doesn’t tell him she’s had nightmares all night. Uh-oh.

At school everyone treats Becka like a celebrity, and Julie talks her into contacting Maxwell again.

And Julie was right about another thing. If she had been someone great in a previous life, if she did hold some kind of secret power, wasn’t it her responsibility to find out?

p. 41

Scott and Darryl visit Darryl’s cousin Hubert, because they want him to use his hacking abilities to track down Z’s identity. Hubert is a slob who lives in a heap of pizza boxes and cats, because subtlety doesn’t exist in this universe.

Maxwell visits Becka’s house:

Mom shook her head as she wearily crossed to the door. When she opened it, she was caught completely off guard. She had expected some sort of strange and eccentric-looking weirdo. What she saw was a tall, handsome man with thick silver hair, who was dressed in stylish khaki slacks, a turtleneck, and a sport coat.

He looked positively respectable. And gorgeous.

“Mrs. WIlliams?”

“Y-yes?” Mom stuttered.

“I’m Maxwell Hunter.”

pp. 47-48

Peak American Christianity: thinking khaki slacks are stylish.

He tells them he’s a Christian and prays with them before hypnotically regressing Becka, and kudos to the author, it’s unnerving to watch Becka’s mother let herself be reassured by his obviously non-standard “Christianity.”

“O high god,” he said, “we ask you to help us — to show us the perfect path to greater enlightenment.”

p. 55

I like the touch of not capitalizing God, to tip off the reader that this guy is sus. I don’t get why the prayer for enlightenment doesn’t alert Becka’s mom, though: that isn’t how Christians phrase things.

While she’s hypnotized, Maxwell urges Becka to go through a star-turned-doorway (I don’t know either, so don’t ask), but she feels afraid, so he drops it and carries on regressing her, back past the guillotine scene.

She’s on a horse in the forest, and can tell by her hands that she’s a man. Huge manhands: always a giveaway. She’s wearing a ring with the number XVI on it, and I already know who she’s supposed to be.

But then Scott gets home and interrupts the session. Scott dislikes Maxwell for a number of reasons, all of them legit as far as I’m concerned.

And if that wasn’t enough, ol’ Maxy boy had asked Mom if he could call her sometime. Call her? His mom? The guy was practically asking for a date right there in front of her own kids! What gall!

Scott didn’t like him. Not one bit. And this whole thing about reincarnation. How could his sister believe that? Wasn’t reincarnation some sort of Hindu thing? And weren’t the three of them supposed to be Christians? Christians didn’t believe in reincarnation…did they?”

p. 63

“Ol’ Maxy boy?” “What gall!” I love how Scotty sounds like a particularly corny escapee from a 1950s sitcom.

He chats with Z, who confirms reincarnation isn’t a Christian belief, but then Z senses someone is monitoring their conversation and logs off. Scott feels bad about having asked Darryl’s cousin to track Z down.

Becka has a nightmare about the star-turned-doorway, with a loud rumbling noise as the light gets closer. Like a TRAIN, maybe?

At breakfast Becka quarrels with Scott over whether Christians can believe in reincarnation, and wins the argument by saying Maxwell prayed with them — but crucially doesn’t repeat the unconvincingly-Christian prayer.

She also tells him that Maxwell knew all about the lights and noises in the garage. That’s a stretch, Becka: after you turned to look at the garage he asked if there’s something out there that disturbs you. Any half-decent cold reader could have done that.

Again, though: full points to the book for making Becka and her mom sound exactly how people think when talking themselves into believing something.

At school, one of the Society kids (they’re the ones hanging out at the Ascension Bookstore) tells Scott it’s “cool” what’s going on with Becka, and he sensibly is even less happy with it.

Scott also doesn’t unfold the paper Darryl gives him with Z’s information on it, because he’s having (belated) moral issues with tracking down someone who wants to remain anonymous.

Julie is beginning to be concerned about Becka.

Ryan and Becka visit Pepe on their way home from track, and he takes them up on a ridge near the Death Bridge. Becka recognizes the location from her nightmares.

As Rebecca watched she felt a strange detachment creep over her. The same detachment she felt when she was being hypnotized. Suddenly it was as if things weren’t completely real. As if they weren’t that important. If Pepe remained safe on the trestle, fine, he deserved it. If he slipped and fell, that would be OK, too, because he probably deserved that. It was as if everything was part of a plan…the workings of a “fair and just universe.”

pp. 80-81

She also finds herself thinking that the people living in poverty in this part of town probably deserve it. Sentence fragments aside, this is a not-unreasonable (and frequently voiced, not just by evangelical Christians) criticism.

Scott goes out with Darryl to track down Z, and Becka and her mom are relieved he’s gone, because Maxwell Hunter is taking Mom out to dinner.

Wait, does she even have a name?

Maxwell shows up with a dozen roses, and insists she take them with her instead of putting them in a vase. LOL, what a loon.

He also creepily tells Becka to enjoy her evening at home because it will have “surprises.” Yeah, there is no way I’d leave a child home alone after that.

Scott and Darryl follow the address they’ve been given and end up in an unoccupied new development outside town. A man in a car blinds them with his headlights and tells them to leave before he has them arrested.

Becka is wondering about the “power” Maxwell keeps assuring her she has.

She’d tried praying about it, but her prayer had felt strange, empty…like there was no one at the other end.

pp. 93-94

Again: uh oh.

She starts looking up guillotine in the encyclopedia–remember those? encyclopedias, I mean, not guillotines–and finds Louis XVI. She’s all flattered and excited because he’s described as a kind and great king (albeit gullible), because she’s assuming she was him. Of course she is. And now that she knows kindness was her weakness, she reasons, she can be even more powerful in this life. I’m obviously using a pretty loose definition of “reasons” in that last sentence.

Scott gets home to a message from Z suggesting they meet tomorrow at seven at the same place, and stupidly wonders how Z could have known where he was.

Meanwhile:

It had been a long time since Mom had felt so protected, so secure, so…cared for.

p. 99

Okay, she really doesn’t have a name. She’s just “Mom” even in her interior monologue. Weird.

Also, that’s a whole lot to be feeling on a first date with an obvious con artist.

Maxwell is so obviously not really a Christian that even Mom starts to notice.

Maxwell chuckled. His eyes were growing moist, taking on the dull sheen of someone who was slowly but steadily getting drunk. “Sin. Now there’s a quaint notion. Sin is a state of mind. We all have the Christ inside. It just takes some of us longer to tap into that power than others.”

“Power?” Mom shifted slightly. The alarms grew louder.

p. 101

He levitates a spoon. This is the worst date ever. Imagine watching some drunk guy do magic tricks while you carry around a dozen roses.

She leaves, and Maxwell follows her. In the parking lot a stray dog instantly growls at him, showing better judgement than the vast majority of characters in this book. Maxwell does some weird mind-stuff to make it “writhe in agony,” in case we haven’t gotten the point that he’s evil.

Mom, thank goodness, attacks the creep with her purse, and the dog escapes before he can kill it. Then Maxwell doesn’t remember what just happened.

“Wait! Please, I can explain!”

But Mom did not wait. She did not reply. She just kept running. All she wanted was to get away–from Maxwell, from whatever evil this was–and to get home so she could warn her little girl.

p. 106

Becka has her train dream again, only this time Maxwell is there, encouraging her to enter the light. What, the light from an oncoming train? That sounds…unwise.

Becka’s mom warns her that Maxwell is evil, but it’s too late.

It was her mother’s careless, stupid prayers that had prevented her from experiencing the power that was waiting for her.

p. 111

Julie tracks down Becka in the library, and they have the single most hilarious conversation in the entire book.

“What are you reading?” Before Becka could answer, Julie spun the book around on the table and read, “Modern Day Hinduism. What’s that about?”

Becka turned the book back and said, “I’m afraid it’s too complicated for you to understand.”

pp. 111-112

They’re an indie band, Julie, you’ve probably never heard of them.

Becka also intends to skip track, and she’s uninterested in Ryan, so obviously she’s not herself right now. Ryan wants to take her to visit Pepe again, and she and Julie are confused when she explains it’s his own damn fault he’s poor.

Darryl and Scott go looking for Z again. The guy in the car shows up, and gives them directions to yet another house. There, another guy and a woman claiming to be a friend of Z’s warn them that Becka is in danger from Maxwell. The woman explains that she grew up in India and was orphaned.

“For my own good, I was cast out of my village and left to die. They believed the more quickly I died and paid for my past evil, the more quickly I would be reincarnated into a better life.”

“You mean nobody would help you?” Scott asked.

“They were afraid to interfere with my karma, to incur the wrath of our gods.”

p. 122

But Z rescued her, and now Z has asked her to intervene because he’s worried about Becka.

Becka and her mom have been fighting because Mom won’t let her see Maxwell again. So Becka, sulking in her room, decides to try self-hypnosis. She sees the tunnel again, and Maxwell, but before she can be absorbed into the light Mom and Scott interrupt by pounding on her bedroom door.

She’s really, really mad that they can’t appreciate her greatness, being the King of France and all, and tells them their little minds can’t appreciate Maxwell’s greatness. Scott tries to tell her she’s been experiencing hallucinations and demons, not greatness.

To prove her point– how this is supposed to prove anything, I cannot guess–she gets Mom to take her and Scott to the Death Bridge.

She runs up the ridge, pursued by a bear her family, Ryan, and Pepe. Scott reaches the top and tries to drag her off the track as the train approaches. She pushes Scott away, shoving him down the hill, and Pepe throws himself off the bridge and knocks her out of the way. Sort of. A steel rail at the front of the locomotive hits them.

Becka is in the hospital for three days before her memory returns.

Pepe has lost his two front teeth and is on crutches, so at least they didn’t kill off the heartwarming comic-relief minority.

Becka realizes she has been an idiot. She also has a concussion, broken collarbone, and broken leg. Mom, meanwhile, has figured out Maxwell’s prayer wasn’t all that legit.

Becka and Scott and Mom pray together, just in case Becka has any lingering traces of evil or Hinduism.

Scott has one last conversation with Z, who underlines that reincarnation is evil, and suggests Scott look into the lights and noises in the garage.

Final Thoughts:

That was…a lot.

It’s an entertaining read, and not badly written. But this is my least favourite thing about Christianity: the way every other belief system gets reduced to demons. I’m not saying all Christians think that way, obviously. This series, however, is entirely that. Hinduism? Demons. Paganism? Demons. Aliens? Demons. Everything is either Jesus or demons; it’s never merely wrong or different or silly. It’s having an anti-conversion effect on me and putting me off Christianity.

It does, however, make me appreciate the Dark Forces series more. At least those books, while finding endless paths to Satan, don’t imply those things inevitably lead to Satan. Like, presumably some pennywhistles don’t summon demons.

Also, I hope you don’t expect Becka (characterized as intensely loyal and also a caring Christian) to ever think of or worry about Pepe again. Because I’m up to book six now and no one ever mentions him or his mother. They are ethnic-flavoured plot devices, not characters, and you can forget all about them once they’ve done their bit. It’s not like the depiction of a kid whose mother has tuberculosis and financial struggles is going to haunt the reader or anything, right?