Review of “Son of the Doomsday Prophet” by Steven Byers

Score: 95+/100 (9.5+ out of 10)

And this is why you don't judge a book by its cover, its title, or its first hundred pages!
Son of the Doomsday Prophet by Steven Byers pleasantly surprised us with its action, adventure, suspense, drama, and—most shockingly of all—its romance!

This book contains some of the sweetest, most touching, most compelling, powerful, beautiful, and—dare we say—sexy romances we've ever read about! We can't emphasize enough how touched and compelled we were by the relationships between Noah's sons and their various love interests, all with the looming threat of the Great Flood, the supernatural Watchers, and natural threats like drought and famine looming over everything.

It really had us at the edge of our seats! One we got about halfway through this book, we couldn't put it down!

So, where do we start?

Well, let's start with the characters because they're really what make this book great.

The main protagonist is Japheth, the eldest of the Biblical Noah's three sons and largely believed to have been the ancient ancestor to many Europeans. However, despite his considerably grand role in the history of humankind, Japheth largely goes unnoticed by most, even Biblical scholars and rabbis. He most certainly isn't as popular or venerated as patriarchs like Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob. He doesn't have a book of the scriptures named after him, and the most we hear of him is usually involving his covering of Noah's nakedness/drunkenness, having been married, and being a son of Noah.

Noah, perhaps, gives us the best description of Japheth in this book:

“...the son of a prophet and yet not a prophet; being born of a leading clan and yet an outcast; loving and not being loved”

Japheth is an incredibly sympathetic character with a great deal of emotional depth and relatable conflicts like pining for love, having conflicts of faith, and desiring to be a positive role-model to his brothers. So many of us have been there and done that. We've experienced similar things. Now, none of us have experienced the impending doom of a Great Flood or having worked on a giant boat that can't steer for 100+ years.

Yes, the well-known story of the building of the Ark and the collecting of the animals does take place throughout the book, but they're more so in the background. Strangely, however, that doesn't make these Biblical events seem insignificant, rather, this story seems to add meat to the bone—to flesh out the characters we've come to know from the religious texts. Just when you think you know the message the author is supposedly trying to push, a character or incident will come along to challenge it. And that's part of the beauty of this book. It clearly comes from a place of respect, love, and reverence for the Holy Bible, and yet it isn't preachy or didactic. It doesn't push or force one particular narrative. Rather, it lets you think for yourself and see the world as the characters (historical figures) may have seen it.

For example, not every human being, beast, or even Nephilim in this book is irredeemably evil or immoral. Rather, this surprisingly real-seeming world (the Earth before the Great Flood) seems to lived in and full with relatable and familiar people, people who act, think, and function the way that people today do. Some just want to be rich and famous (like Gomer, the dreamer). Some want power (like Ben-Tubal, the governor). Some are truly despicable like Baldag. Some are just doing their job (like Krell, the executioner). Some are actually good people who feel bound and obligated to serve people who do wrong (like Dayak). Some are just starving and guided by hunger like the thief in Nod.

Some are somewhere in the middle—conflicted—like Sheshi-Behura, Re-Aylah, Jirah, and Minnah—some of the love interests of the book.

And there's the heart and soul of this book: the female characters.

This book is not only the tale of the sons of Noah (Japheth, Ham, and Shem), but it is also the story of the women they loved and met along the way. We know from the scriptures that all three sons were married/had sexual relations at some point, which seems obvious considering that we're all supposed to be descended from the three of them. So, who were these women? Who were these wives? What were they like?

Were they good people? Did they love and follow the Lord, God, like we're told Noah did? Were they all from the same tribe or could they have come from a different one? And why would God put these women—of all women—on an Ark with these men—of all men?

Those are some intriguing, fascinating, and compelling questions!

To make things even better, these female characters possess an uncanny amount of charisma, energy, and allure. It's hard to describe, but... they just come across as so spunky, likable, and attractive.

The main female protagonist of the novel is Re-Aylah, Japheth's love interest. Their relationship is adorable. So, in a sense, Re-Aylah was kinda Japheth's childhood bully similar to how Nadia had bullied Sayid in Lost. Strange comparison, we know, but it was the first one that came to mind. Re-Aylah, like many people, was both curious and skeptical about what on earth the Noah boys were doing rolling logs on prehistoric wheels and making a boat. One of her first lines is, “Could we ask what you're doing?”

There's a lot more subtext to that question than just the words themselves. You can tell there's a curiosity and, perhaps more importantly, a yearning in Re-Aylah's heart to know the truth and find answers. In a sense, she can be likened to someone who hasn't found God yet but who remains curious about his existence and yearning for his presence in her life.

She says:

“Now I know that it was wrong and I’m sorry. As for the rest, I’m very confused. I hear your words and they frighten me. But I do not understand how your family alone can be right while all the rest of the world is wrong.”

Re-Aylah also has a sarcastic and playful side to her personality that makes her appealing. For example, she tends to call Japheth, sarcastically, the one who's “always right.”

Japheth and Re-Aylah are just simply an adorable couple, one of the best in the contest so far! It helps that they don't feel forced together or shoved down your throat. In fact, there's a lot of tension between the two. There's a lot of tension between all the couples in this book. These aren't magnets of opposite charges attracting, these seem like real, living people who are struggling to come together against all odds. And that's what makes them compelling!

Re-Aylah, despite being from a different group, often comes to the same river as Japheth to fill her jug of water. This results in both a touching and funny moment in which Re-Aylah ends up falling in the water because of Japheth, something which she holds over his head for the rest of the novel. This relationship really feels earned, especially considering all the terrible, turbulent things that Japheth goes through to hopefully find himself back in the arms of Re-Aylah, his one true love and the one person he is committed to making his wife.

For example, he and his brothers travel to the inhospitable land of Nod where there is little food or water. Japheth is captured multiple times and eventually imprisoned by the Watchers (powerful fallen angels), threatened with death, tempted by his hot female lawyer (Sheshi), encounters monsters/beasts of various kinds, gets into scuffles, skirts with doom in the governor's palace, gets hunted like a wounded animal by the villainous Baldag, and much more!

There is so much tension, action, adventure, and drama in this book!

We've talked a lot about Japheth and Re-Aylah, our lead male and female protagonists, but what about the others?

Well, there's also Minnah, a bit of a childhood crush of the boys, who comes across as a wandering soul who gradually deteriorates as she comes back and forth, in and out of the boys' lives until she's almost unrecognizable and prone to thievery to keep herself alive, eventually calling herself “nobody.” Guilt and shame wreck havoc on her mind and soul, causing her to develop a drinking problem (for “Grack”--an alcohol-like drink that makes you forget things). She's a very tragic characters and not one we ever came across to hating or disliking. Minnah reminded us a bit of Jenny from Forest Gump. There was always a hope that someday she would make it out of this alive and finding salvation. Perhaps there still is.

Then there's Jirah, Ham's high-born crush—the daughter of His Excellency Ben-Tubal, the tyrant of the region. Jirah is essentially a princess, and she doesn't start this book as a believer like Noah and his sons do. She's a bit of an outsider to their belief system and traditions. Simultaneously, Ham is an outsider to her family's belief system and traditions, not to mention their class differences. Jirah is royalty. Ham, on the other hand, is comparable to lower-nobility, slightly elevated by him being the son of a prophet, albeit one whom many folks are losing faith in (after his prophecy having not come to fruition in decades).

Now, Jirah can be funny because she comes across as an entitled little princess sometimes, which is how you'd expect a person with her background to act. There's a moment in which the heroes are severely outnumbered like 90 to 1 and Jirah still insists that her husband defend her honor after being insulted! That's Jirah for you!

There's also Sheshi-Behura, a kind of lawyer or defense attorney whom Japheth meets pretty late into this book as Japheth faces arguably the most daunting and insurmountable threat to his life. He meets her in his darkest hour, in other words. What's particularly beautiful and powerful about the character of Sheshi is that she seems to represent two very different things on two separate ends of the morality spectrum:

1. She represents HOPE
2. She represents TEMPTATION

Sheshi is a very appealing and charismatic character in a lot of ways. You can't help but hope that she can get Japheth out of the dire predicament that he's in. At the same time, she also seems to develop romantic and intimate feelings for him which clash with Japheth's faith and his loyalty to both God and Re-Aylah.

We are so grateful that the author didn't just throw her under the bus as some kind of Jezebel or succubus, instead giving her a very dignified and understandable place in the story.

In fact, it's like that with a lot of the morally-gray or even dark characters.

For example, there's a big, huge, monstrous Nephilim in here named Krell. He's essentially an executioner and torturer. Now, you'd think he'd be savage and despicable. However, he comes across as shockingly polite, cordial, and considerate, even when he's pointing out ways to hurt and maim Japheth! It's such a subversion of expectations.

Speaking of subverting our expectations, many of the unsaved characters who would normally be portrayed as bad, corrupt, immoral, amoral, or even outright evil in religious texts are actually very sympathetic rather than being caricatured into villainous roles with villainous attributes. For example, there's Dayak, a man who tries to do right by the Noah boys who helped him a decade earlier. However, he's still tied to his new, comfortable life and other obligations he feels he has.

Even some of the Nephilites and Canaanites are humanized to a great degree rather than being portrayed as enemies or others. There's even a scene in which the heroes compete in a kind of prehistoric Olympic Games with the Nephilites, discovering that they can't keep up with their strength and speed. You really get the sense that these aren't cartoon characters, they're actual living beings. It's just unfortunate that many of them seem disinclined to being saved or seeking God for whatever reason, tragic in the context of this story.

The Nephilim even have their own set of problems such as losing the ability to procreate and being compared to “eunuchs” by Krell. The same is true for the Watchers who, while pretty much evil demons, are still trying to seek out new information in an attempt to improve their situations.

Now, there are some irredeemably evil people in this book who will really get on your nerves. For exmaple, there's Hura and Baldag, some of the secondary villains of the novel who just come across as needless jerkish jerks all the time. However, they're far and in between.

There's a lot of humanity in this book. It really feels real and lived-in.

And the humans aren't alone. Remember the animals? Well, there were some strange creatures before the Great Flood including behemoths and foot-long caterpillars and presumably transform into massive butterflies or moths. The Noah boys also seem to have some kind of affinity with the animals, some of whom (like the beavers and wolves) actually help them to either build the Ark or to serve as guides. That kinda explains how they're eventually able to collect samples of these animals (according to the traditional lore). It is also implied that leviathans exists somewhere in the world (or may have gone extinct).

We did not expect to be so wowed and surprised by a book based on a story that's over 2000 years old—one that's seemingly been done to death. Boy, were we wrong! This book is fresh, exciting, and incredibly romantic!

Check it out on Amazon!