Novel provides more answers than questions

By Kurt Armstrong and ChristianWeek | October 27, 2009

Christianus Sum is Shawn Pollett's first novel. The book cleaned up at the 2009 Word Guild Awards, taking top honours for historical fiction, romance and (quite mysteriously) mystery.

The novel is set in third-century Rome. It's a love story about a Roman senator named Valens, still grieving over the loss of his wife, who falls for Damarra, a slave woman who is a Christian. The evil Valerianus, a Roman lieutenant, has it in for Valens, who has bruised the soldier's ego. To curry the favour of the Emperor and to take revenge on his rival, Valens, Valerianus sets in motion a vicious persecution of Roman Christians.

Several pressing questions push the story forward: Will Valens become a Christian? Will Damarra survive the persecution? And, most pressing, will Valens marry the girl he loves?

The action of the story is interesting, and it moves at a good pace. Pollett's other passion is history, and he includes carefully researched details on attire, architecture and battles.

Alas, the characters are one-dimensional. Valerianus is a villain; Valens is valiant; Damarra is noble and pure. All of them are more like caricatures than living characters. The complexity and ambiguity of real-life characters is absent. The flat characters make for flat drama as well. Early on it's pretty clear who's good and who's evil and what will happen in the end. Easy reading. Too easy.

My chief complaint with a lot of explicitly Christian fiction is that it uses the novel as an evangelistic tool, making Christian fiction a distinct genre: the story is a delivery system for a clear message. No matter how noble the message, if the message trumps the art, it starts to look like propaganda.

Pollett's book is no exception; it's hard not to see this book primarily as a witnessing tool. Contemporary evangelical morals and practices—personal Scripture reading, soul/body dualism, black and white morality—are dressed up in an unconvincing third-century Roman costume.

Art is good, at least in part, when it raises good questions. But questions are risky because they are often ambiguous. Christianus Sum has some tidy answers, but no challenging questions, making it very safe but not especially engaging.