Absalom: The Shadow King by Trevor Kincaid | Biblical Fiction Review

Trevor Kincaid does an excellent job of making Absalom a sympathetic character. I could genuinely see the world through his eyes as he wrestled with grief, injustice, and anger. Then, slowly and almost imperceptibly, bitterness and the hunger for power began twisting his thinking and distorting his perceptions. It was a sobering reminder that this kind of self-deception isn't unique to Absalom. Given the right circumstances, any of us is capable of allowing sin to reshape the way we see the world.

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I had forgotten one major twist in this story: the moment when Absalom does that awful thing on the rooftop with his father's concubines. For some reason, I'd always attributed that incident to another Bible character, so it caught me completely by surprise.

What struck me most, though, was something I'd never connected before. After spending years despising Amnon for violating Tamar and ultimately murdering him for it, Absalom ends up becoming the very kind of man he hated—only far worse. I don't know how I'd missed that parallel before, but seeing it play out made his story all the more tragic.

One of the novel's greatest strengths is the way Trevor advocates for violated women whose suffering has too often been overlooked. His treatment of Tamar is compassionate, thoughtful, and refuses to let the reader forget that while everyone else moved on, she was still living with the consequences of what had been done to her.

The ending was on the graphic side. I had to skim parts of it. It's a heartbreaking and deeply ironic end for a man who had so much potential.