TOXIC by Vicki V. Lucas--Book Review

What if your destiny stretched you mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually?

Think carefully about reading this book. It’s filled with things like sword fights and flying horses, death and magic, violence and huge evil monsters, and there is absolutely no hope that life will turn out okay at the end. If you do choose to read this book, prepare yourself. This is not a story for the faint of heart. Your beliefs are guaranteed to be challenged. The monsters will never give up until they catch you, the magic is too strong to fight, and the disease from the water is impossible to cure. Kai, Taryn, and Lizzy have to purify the toxic water of Eltiria before anyone else dies. If they don’t, life as they know it will cease to exist. A Winged Horse sets them on the search to locate the source of the poison and to find their faith while battling to see the truth in a world of chaos and destruction.

In her book, TOXIC, Vicki V. Lucas brings to life three youth who are thrust together to fight a common enemy and solve a big problem for their towns perhaps making them heroes.  Lucas does an amazing job of creating the fictional towns these three came from and details the area so much so that it is easy to "see" the people, the landscape, and the characters.  The characters were my favorite part of the book, next to the story.  The action flowed so well and engaged me in such a deep way that even when I fell asleep reading the book at 1 or 2 a.m., I would dream about the characters and the events in the story!

The story takes three teens and casts them as chosen slayers who can defeat the evil Belial and Nighthawk Nephesus and free their people of delusions of great kings, goddesses, crystals.  The trio is shown the power of Adoyni, a great and loving God.  There is tell of a battle in which Lesu is killed, and has evil pawns called the Unwanteds.

One of my favorite parts was the accurately and detailed manner in which Lucas shows how the two teens boys have come to have compassion over their friend, Lizzy, who falls ill.  They are all from such different social classes that back home this would have been unheard of.

An underlying theme that I saw was that often God calls us to minister or partner with those who come from very different walks of life, but He has a purpose for us and it's much bigger and grander than we know.  We aren't alone in fulfilling our destinies, and we just have to believe in the power of God.
I have to admit that, aside from Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia, I don't usually like a lot of fantasy fiction. In fact, I've ONLY seen the movies of those books; I never have read the stories! 

Thank you, Vicki Lucas, for engaging me with your characters and drawing me in to this story!!

You can order TOXIC via Amazon!