In a future where many sources of enjoyment have been
banned, along with riding animals, and a religion dedicated
to the Light rules, young Thomas has just come of age. A
vicar, needing to make up a quota, whisks him away from
Little Pond for Teaching. Sitting in a dark cellar,
scantily fed, lectured by vicars, Thomas steadfastly
promises to protect light from dark. Then he's told he can
return home - provided he gives the names of anyone in
Little Pond who is breaking rules.
In THERE COMES A PROPHET Orah, almost of age, is a weaver
girl in Little Pond. She and a farmer boy called Nathaniel
are Thomas's friends. Worrying about his prolonged
absence, they can do nothing to help. When Thomas returns,
he is thin, hollow-eyed and bitter, saying little. It
takes most of the winter for him to start talking to his
friends again. Then Orah is taken for Teaching and
Nathaniel, panicking, rushes after her to the city where he
offers to take her place. This has never happened before,
and while decisions are being made Nathaniel speaks with an
old man who is imprisoned for speaking his mind - that the
feared religious carry on Teachings as a way to control the
populace. They instill limits instead of providing
possibilities. He asks the boy to take with him a secret
which guards the remnants of the past. Released, the two
collect Thomas and leave Little Pond, searching for the
truth.
What starts as a simple adventure story changes to give the
characters recorded definitions of words such as politics,
religion and theocracy. I thought that at this point the
characters ceased to be quite such individuals and became
people learning and deciding to spread the same message.
Clearly David Litwack is hoping that young adults will
think for themselves and try to understand better why
different parts of the world are governed the way they are,
or follow the teachings they do, and decide what they want
to have in their own lives. The hidden keep which stores
the previous era's science is compared to the knowledge
preserved by monasteries during the Dark Ages of Europe.
THERE COMES A PROPHET reminds us that people who challenge
the status quo - like young people everywhere - are not
always welcome.
A world kept peaceful for a thousand years by the magic of
the ruling vicars. But a threat lurks from a violent past.
Wizards from the darkness have hidden their sorcery in a
place called the keep, and left a trail of clues that have
never been solved.
Nathaniel has grown up longing for more, but unwilling to
challenge the vicars. Until his friend Thomas is taken for a
teaching, the mysterious coming-of-age ritual. Thomas
returns but with his dreams ripped away. When Orah is taken
next, Nathaniel tries to rescue her and ends up in the
prisons of Temple City. There he meets the first keeper of
the ancient clues. But when he seeks the keep, what he finds
is not magic at all.
If he reveals the truth, the words of the book of light
might come to pass:
"If there comes among you a prophet saying 'Let us return
to the darkness,' you shall stone him, because he has sought
to thrust you away from the light."
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