Phil's Reviews > Christian Nation

Without realising it, I appear to have become a fan of dystopian counterfactual fiction.(Wow, is that, you know, A Thing?). This particular novel certainly fits into that category, presenting as a memoir the events leading up to the establishment of a brutal Christian theocracy in the USA. The protagonist is a liberal-minded New York lawyer, who helps a charismatic friend battle the forces of a "dominionist" (Google it!) Christian movement that uses a Palin presidency as springboard to power. Implausible? Unlikely, but not necessarily implausible given the assistance of some unpredictable events that the dominionists seize on to do, as the author is at pains to point out, "what they said they would do". It reads sometimes as polemic, the traditional twists and turns of plot never really happen and some might find the lengthy passages of legal exposition a turnoff, but I wasn't bothered by these flaws. I had, in fact, expected a slightly trashier read but was pleasantly surprised by its erudition.