Defenders of the Covenant by Angie Lofthouse
This August at the LDS Booksellers Convention I met author Angie Lofthouse who has just published her first novel, Defenders of the Covenant. Sci-Fi is never my first choice when choosing a book, but I had some time and started reading her novel the same day.
The book takes place sometime in the future. Earth has been taken over by alien invaders. Groups of refugees have hidden themselves underground and lived all their lives without seeing the light of day or knowing what Earth looks like, really. The book tells the story of one particular group of people who are LDS. Even though they have been warned all their lives of the dangers of leaving their refuge, four teens run away from their hiding place to discover for themselves what has happened to Earth.
The aliens capture the four of them and separate them and they each face individual struggles with the aliens – and with themselves as they now have to figure things out on their own. Three of them use their religious beliefs and training to guide them. One boy, Jeremy, rebels and his thought processes were never very clear to me. It seemed he joined the dark side and became evil very quickly and easily.
There is plenty of drama and action and pretty good character development. I struggled with the believability factor a bit, but as I said, I don’t often read sci-fi novels and a certain suspension of reality is probably requisite.
It’s an interesting idea to take aliens, Mormons, the Salt Lake Temple, faith, prayer, android soldiers, pig-people and even a bit of a love story and weave them together. The book is probably suitable for ages 10-12 and up and will most likely appeal mainly to Mormons. It is 350 or so pages long, but a quick and easy read.
I give it 3 out of 5 stars.
