Illusion

February 13, 2012
Some novelists resist allegory, but Peretti (Monster) embraces it. When Mandy dies in a car accident, Dane, her husband of 40 years and illusionist partner, must carry on without her. But is he really without her? Mandy awakens from the accident in the present, but as a 19-year-old who thinks it’s 1970. The two soon meet as Mandy is experimenting with some new magical powers and trying to figure out just who is behind this grand illusion. Though she calls herself Eloise, she resembles the Mandy whom Dane met 40 years before, and it’s making him crazy. Meanwhile Mandy wonders if she is certifiably crazy herself, but she is soon confronted by dark figures who know why she came back and what could become of her. Peretti captures the irony of how two magicians get caught in a greater illusion than they’ve ever created themselves.

March 15, 2012
A time-traveling work of legerdemain by well-known Christian novelist Peretti (Piercing the Darkness, 2003, etc.). If you were a magician's assistant, you'd probably file suit if your employer sent you spinning off into another dimension. Somehow, that's just what's happened to Mandy Collins, the lesser of equals in the magic act Dane and Mandy, who, after four decades of being married to the boss, has drifted into an alternate universe where she's back to her late-teen self in 1970. The soundtrack to that bit of time travel may be Flip Wilson, Dean Martin and Laugh-In ("Sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me"), but all is not japes and jests in the land of the walking tie-dyed undead. Meanwhile, poor Dane Collins is stumbling through life thinking that Mandy is dead, their own private Idaho ("they still returned simply because it was Idaho and Mandy loved Idaho") empty without her. Until, that is, Mandy shows up in her 19-year-old guise, leading the old magician to, well, think about new tricks. In a pure-of-heart way, of course: Dane's no horndog, even if, you bet your bippy, the post-teenybopper makes for temptation: "Whatever this fixation with a twenty-year-old was," he notes, "it had to be affecting his thinking." Roger that. Peretti employs a squad of mad scientists to give the story wonky grounding--"She had at least 50 percent opacity, and I'm guessing I had the same opacity to her," says one dogged researcher before barking out weird-science lingo that belongs on a Star Trek set. (The reader will want to work the term "deflection debt" into his or her next conversation.) It would be stealing Peretti's thunder to tell what happens next, but suffice it to say that true love conquers all, even relativistic space-time. The physics are dubious, the story lightweight--but it's all good fun.

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March 15, 2012
Magic, tragedy, triumph, and a love that transcends death permeate the latest novel by master storyteller Peretti. Illusion is about a captivating magician couple, Dane and Mandy. After performing together for 40 years, devastation occurs when a car accident appears to claim Mandy's life and Dane must deal with the hard reality of going on without her. Peretti deals us a skillful twist when Mandy, presumed dead, wakes up in the present as the 19-year-old girl she was in 1970. Nothing makes sense for either of them as they try to get a grip on their new worlds: Dane without Mandy, and Mandy scared and confused as she tries to find her way back to the twenty-first century. Their struggle to reunite offers an inspiring and romantic approach to the popular theme of time travel, and to Peretti's signature elements of mystery and magic, with undertones of Christian symbolism. Readers of Christian fantasy will make this a new favorite.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)