I am not a lover of science. It confuses me and makes me feel like an idiot, at times. That said, I do love science fiction – even those moments that have my eyes glazing over and me wondering, again, why it is that I get sucked into these types of stories.

Kerry Nietz is one of those reasons. With The Superlative Stream (and his previous book in the DarkTrench Saga, A Star Curiously Singing), Nietz takes a hold of my imagination and begins to manipulate it, creating some of the most incredible images and fantastic thoughts, thoughts that move me to tears when I am reminded of the beauty of my faith.

For a long time I’ve bemoaned “Christian Literature” and its tendency to preach and browbeat its readers with “wholesome” (see: mundane) stories that have the protagonist living a life of sin, repenting and then living a life that miraculously has gotten amazing! The DarkTrench Saga is not that type of literature. It reminds me of a mixture of Isaac Asimov’s masterpieces mixed in with the dystopia world that a runaway faith and technology can cause (much like Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale).

Nietz has gotten a lot of flack for using a religion that is very powerful in our world right now – and the flack he’s been getting has been primarily from his own faith. It’s important to understand before reading these books, that these are works of fiction, that they are intended to show what could be in another time, another place, another universe – which is what science fiction is all about.

Most of all though, Kerry Nietz has provided the me, a believer, with something I’m eternally grateful to him for – a book that doesn’t insult my intelligence, that glorifies God in a subtle, but intensely beautiful way, and tells a story that has me begging for more. ( )