Mike Yorkey and Rick Myatt Reviews

Added February 24, 2006

By the Sword

Author: Mike Yorkey and Rick Myatt
Publisher: Broadman and Holman Publishers
Available At: Bookstores Everywhere
Publishing Date: January 2006
Genre: Fiction: Thriller/Christian
Format: Trade Paperback
Price: $14.99
ISBN: 0805440739
Reviewer: Phillip Tomasso III

By the Sword is a timely Mideast thriller. If you know your Bible, the Word clearly warns that Christians will be persecuted for their faith. I don't just mean made fun of, or laughed at because you bring and read your Bible at work. I mean persecuted. Daily, we read of unfolding events that plague countries like Iran and Jerusalem, we read about Christians being imprisoned, tortured and even murdered for their beliefs. We see that Muslims use a convert-or-die technique to force people into the Muslim Faith. As an American, where freedom of religion is our right, I often forget, or completely fail to realize what is actually taking place in the Mideast. Mike Yorkey and Rick Myatt have crafted an eye-opening novel that forces a reader to contemplate the horrors that exist outside the safety net of America.

During Passover, nearly an entire population in an apartment building is brutally murdered. First on the scene is Amber Robbins, an American reporter on assignment in the Mideast. Though clear evidence from what is being called the Passover Massacre points toward a particular radical group, Amber begins to gather clues that lead her to believe otherwise. Things get progressively worse, and just as violent when King Abdullah is assassinated, and his uncle, Hassan Hussein, is crowned the ruling monarch.

As her investigation leads closer to the truth, her snooping triggers an alarm that causes those responsible for the massacre to want her dead. Additionally, war between the Shiites and the Sunnis extremes continues. The Shiites believe the Sunnis compromise their faith to Allah. "The Shiite Ayatollah believes if he can start a Shiite revolution, then the Islamic world will eventually fall under his domain."

All the while small churches meeting in secret in neighborhood homes are under attack. Arrested for leading Muslim people astray, Pastors and Christian converts are given one chance to renounce Jesus as their savior. If they do not they are either murdered on the spot or brought to public execution to deter other Muslims from practicing Christianity.

Knowing that she is being followed, Amber knows she must meet with old friends, and that she must do the unthinkable, and dangerous by entering Iran to get to the heart of story she is investigating. In doing so, she blatantly risks placing herself and her friends in extreme mortal danger. What keeps her going is her faith, and God-given journalistic talents. The truth is in Iran. The truth needs to be exposed. The world needs to know exactly what is going on to prevent a potential, future all out nuclear war.

By the Sword is a must-read thriller. It may be fiction, but it contains such a plausible and possible story that it is quite a bit terrifying. Yorkey and Myatt know that things like terminology and culture in the Middle East are foreign to people like me, and so they've used their talents as authors to capture and explain in a way that makes even the most complicated subjects easier to understand. They have written an impossible to put down book with taut chapters, wonderfully detailed characters, and a compelling plot.

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