I did not like him. I believed him. That was enough.
A Paperwhite Christian-historical reader on Joab: violence as cost, not spectacle, and no mocking of the God who is already in the source.
Editorial reading note from the Backlinker Reader Desk. This is not an Amazon customer review. Personas are composite Kindle-reader voices, not real purchasers, and nothing here is a verified purchase, star rating, or endorsement for Amazon.
I do not need Joab to be kind. I need the book not to sneer at the people who still open Samuel. Bufford does not sneer. He also does not preach. The story is the commander who held the kingdom and paid in blood, and the last page is the altar that does not save him.
Names stayed straight: David, Absalom, Solomon, Benaiah, Zeruiah’s sons. I can keep a family. I cannot keep a committee of invented tribes. This stayed in the source story’s house.
On the violence
There is killing. The tree is terrible. The altar is worse in a quieter way. It did not feel like cruelty for atmosphere. It felt like the bill. I paused after the king is rebuked into public duty. I have sat in rooms where grief was private and the work was not.
I would hand this to a reader who can stand a hard man. I would not hand it to someone who needs a conversion scene in chapter twelve. Faith is in the furniture of the world, not a speech. Book One of The Unsung: I finished it. I will read the Jeremiah next, because a city being buried is a different kind of hard.
For the book club that can stand a hard man
I would not pick The King’s Sword for a group that needs a conversion in the last chapter. I would pick it for a group that can say: Joab did the bloody work, and the peace spent him, and we are allowed to feel two things at once.
The names stay in the house of Samuel and Kings. I could follow Zeruiah’s sons. I could follow the horns. I did not need a study guide, and I am glad the novel did not ship one. Faith is in the room. It is not a speech. That is how I wanted it.
I read The King’s Sword in the chair by the window, Paperwhite brightness down. I did not skim the war years. I did not need Joab to pray out loud. I needed the altar to mean something, and it did. I will read Jeremiah next because a buried city is another kind of grief I recognize.