For your reading pleasure - I handed David Aikman's book, Awaken the Dragon, over to my mother to review, or rather she saw it and asked me if she could read it because it looked really intriguing. I, swamped with writing of my own and work, obliged. The following is her review.
Awaken the Dragon was a great read. Aikman does an incredible job of embedding Chinese culture, politics, religious, and the underground Church in an action filled fiction story.
Given today's international tones this book was all the more interesting. The author's background and knowledge with China helped to give a stronger feel of reality to each aspect of the book.
The characters were all well developed and brought to life. As were the character qualities of Christianity, especially in places of our world where it is under suspicion and attack. As a sideline, this book reminded me of my responsibility as a Christian to be faithful in my prayers for the faithful in China.
The main story plot, that of a missing American, was exciting. The steady development of the action made this book very hard to put down. Even when I finished it, I wanted more. I would recommend this book to anyone.
In author David Aikman's, Awaken the Dragon, Richard Ireton is a Hong Kong-based foreign correspondent for an American weekly news magazine. When he is sent to Guangdong, the Chinese province adjacent to Hong Kong, to investigate the disappearance of Chuck Mchale, a missing American, he discovers there are dangerous new political currents flowing through South China.
In the middle of these developments are practitioners of Qigong, a Taoist meditation and martial arts movement, who are rallying around their Great Master Wu. These fiercely anti-foreign Qigong adherents have allied with renegade forces of the Chinese army, and Ireton learns that together they pose a dangerous new threat to peace in Asia and relations with the United States. Ireton's hunt for McHale, who has run afoul of these Qigong army elements, brings him into the heart of China's underground "house church" movement, where McHale has sought refuge.
Dr. David Aikman is an award-winning print and broadcast journalist, a best selling author, and a foreign policy consultant based in the Washington, D.C.- area. His wide-ranging professional achievements include a 23-year career at TIME magazine. More recently, he authored two ground-breaking books, A MAN OF FAITH: THE SPIRITUAL JOURNEY OF GEORGE W. BUSH, a best-seller published in April 2004, and JESUS IN BEIJING: HOW CHRISTIANITY IS TRANSFORMING CHINA AND CHANGING THE WORLD BALANCE OF POWER.
With special expertise in China, Russia, the Middle East, Mongolia and religious freedom issues worldwide, Dr. Aikman is frequently invited to deliver expert testimony at Congressional hearings and is a popular speaker at conferences, seminars, panels and to academic, church and professional groups at events all over the world.
Visit his website at www.davidaikman.com.
