The City of Fire

This book is a hypocrite.

...or, rather, the author was so focused on the “worldly issues” in front of her face that she couldn't even see the massive problems with her worldview and her plot. Spoilers may occur naturally in the course of this rant review. Click “more” with caution.

Scene first. We have the young antihero, a teenaged and mischievous boy, creeping around looking for something to do and hearing folks plot mischief. Does he tell the police? Nope. He decides to line his own pocket and play hooky after agreeing to commit a crime. Getting paid for a crime is about as bad as doing the crime, silly Billy. During this entire passage I was shocked to find that he repeatedly uses minor swears, peppered across nearly every page of the book, h* and d* alike, with lots of gosh and darn and so on for good measure.

Scene two. The heroine–the Sunday-school teacher extraordinaire, the beautiful maiden, the talented church organist, the apple of the eye and only child of her parents, a pastor and his wife.

Scene three. The hero–a prodigal who stole the heart of the fair maiden in her girlhood and is inherently ignorant of this fact. War veteran, former POW, and sole prop of his widowed mother. Prime idol of the wayward Billy.

To put it briefly, Billy gets his money and tries to foil the trap he got paid to set, but it closes fast with his own dear friend in it. Henceforth Mark has no alibi except for Billy's, and Billy can't tell because of the crime. The real target of the crime, a rich profligate, arrives in Sunday Corners very drunk and in a bad way.

What GLH portrays very clearly in this book as evil are:
+drinking
+smoking
+lying
+dressing too scantily
+dancing
+entering a bar
+too much money not used for charity
+being friendly to anyone who does any of the above

+also gossip, but you can still be friendly to those

What happens that I was hoping would be addressed, which wasn't:
+Lynn is beautiful and smart and has the power to turn men's heads on sight
+Lynn is an insufferable snob
+It's better to remain pure and reserved than tell the Gospel to a rich would-be adulteress
+While the preacher immediately helps the pampered rich kid sober up and heal, telling him about God, he has apparently left Mark, who he claims to view as an own son, to wander about in the world and doesn't know the state of his soul. The portrayal of this major plot element really left me scratching my head.
+Holy was portrayed as a synonym for good. Yes, there was a salvation message, but it was clear that it was meant in addition to living a perfect life. Only–no one in this book was living a perfect life, except maybe the preacher, but he hadn't preached the Gospel until to Billy and Mark at the very end...if he was their preacher from infancy, why didn't they know it previously? This form of soft legalism really got on my nerves, because at the same time his daughter wasn't perfect either.
+Sainted mother and aunt. Mark's mother, and Billy's aunt, are portrayed as suffering saints. They have no clue how to war for these kids and they are supposedly strong Christians but without any impulse to give strong Bible lessons to the son/nephew. What was that supposed to mean? They seem to be following actions rather than following God.
+Billy's swearing. Not a single rebuke.

And so on, more of that sort. I finished it, but I didn't want to.