Palace of Darkness: A Novel of Petra

Since reading a couple of novels written in Biblical times, this has been a fairly new genre for me. So far, I haven’t been disappointed with it, and Palace of Darkness has only encouraged me to look for more books set in this time. Tracy L. Higley created characters that make excellent tour guides into the stone city. While it is hard to fully imagine living in a city carved out of rock, this book made a great attempt to breathe a bit more life into it.

One thing that I really enjoyed with this novel was the way that the early church was captured. The gathering of Christians that took place in Petra had references to Paul and his letters. I imagine that this is close to how the church would have operated. Even more impressive, was Higley’s ability to take those same characters and place them into a spiritual battle that runs throughout the course of the novel.

From page one, Cassia quickly grasped my attention. Moving on from an abusive situation to search for her son’s father’s family had me wondering what she would find in Petra. Not only that, but it seemed like she was bombarded with terrible things happening to her at every turn.

The storyline involving Cassia’s son had a lot of twists and turns to it that made me eager to keep reading. The characters also had me wondering what would happen to them by the end of the novel. But, the relationships between some of the characters felt quite rushed at times.

And finally, I can’t help but gush about this cover. The image of Petra in the background at night is beautiful. There is a theme of darkness in the novel and the cover definitely goes along with this.