Evolution by Jim Reilly

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.

Synopsis:
Throughout his childhood, James Connor was surrounded by both his mother's deep faith in Christianity and his father's passionate pursuit of scientific truths. As an archeology student, he is sent to a remote village in Africa to assist on a dig and stumbles onto a discovery that changed history as we know it. The more information discovered and questions answered, the more determined to prove that Ancient Visitors were responsible for life on Earth James becomes. His assertions lead thousands of people all over the world to question their faith, leaving churches, synagogues and other religious meeting places with dwindling numbers. While the people of Earth deal with the both the scientific and religious consequences of the discovery, the Ancient Visitors return to help the human evolutionary process and throw the planet into further turmoil. When long simmering disputes reach their boiling point, the world's and universe's forces collide in a battle to save a way of life - any way of life.

Review:
In the interest of fairness and honesty, I have to say that I received this book free from a giveaway at Goodreads.com and as much as I enjoyed the actual story, there were several issues with the print version that made it difficult to work my way through the book. Along with a couple of formatting issues, there were times when the dialogue felt stiff as if forced and sometimes the characters sounded so much alike that it was hard to tell one from another. Unfortunately, there were grammatical errors that also hindered the flow of the story and made it difficult to go from scene to scene.

All that aside, the premise of the story was very interesting and intriguing. The author's vision of a possible future was a new take on the old science versus religion debate that we've been circling around for decades, if not centuries. Both sides of the origin argument are explored within the first half of the book. Compelling reasons for each theory are given. Once the action began to pick up, I was surprised each time that I thought I knew which one was going to come out as the prevailing theory. The author did a good job in weaving the theories together to create an outcome that I haven't seen in other books as of yet. Truthfully, if the above issues were corrected, I believe this could be a really great read.

Evolution by Jim Reilly is available in paperback and Kindle form. It can be purchased from Amazon.com at the link below.
Evolution by Jim Reilly