The Circle Series Graphic Novel is, as the title suggests, a graphic novel retelling the events of Ted Dekker's Circle Series, a group of novels detailing an apocalyptic scenario. When I got this book from my small local library, I picked it out because it was one of the few graphic novels I had yet to read. I didn't see that it was marketed as Christian fiction, because if I had I might not have gotten it.

The book details the lives of one Thomas Hunter, who after getting wounded by loan sharks, finds himself transporting between our world and an alternative future world. In our world, he quickly finds himself caught up in a plot to bioengineer a virus that will kill off 90% of the world's population, and in the alternative world, set several hundreds of years into the future, he is caught up in a battle between some peaceful village folk and demonic bats. And the worlds are connected, and the sudden twists in one are echoed in twists in the other.

I wouldn't have picked this up if I had known of its "Christian" content, and I am glad that I didn't, because it is both a reasonably good and interesting story, as well as not being too heavy-handed with the doctrine or conspiracy theories. There is some hints that the people launching the virus want to create a one world government and/or hate Israel, but the treatment there is not too heavy-handed. In the "fantasy" world where the protagonist is transported, supposedly the world thousands of years in the future, the religion is a bit more obvious, with a corporeal figure representing God, Jesus and Satan.

The biggest problem with the story is not in its religious content, but rather in how short of meaning that religious content is. At first, while reading it, I tried to come up with some type of allegory guide... "So this guy is the False Prophet? And this is the... Lake of Fire?" but it didn't seem to match very well with biblical prophecy. Despite being generally good, Elyon (which is a real Hebrew term for the divinity) doesn't seem to be specifically a Jewish or Christian deity. If you replaced "Elyon" with "The Power of Greyskull", the story would make about as much sense. This is a problem that I have pointed out before, that one problem with allegorizing Jesus is that the story ceases being an allegory for Jesus and can instead become just a generic tale of goodness.

As far as this being a graphic adaption, the art is quite good. It is unremarkable, in the good way: it tells the story, without distracting from it. The major connection between the book's art and its story was that while the book does feature a number of buxom and shapely female leads, they are dressed a bit more modestly than they would probably be in a mainstream comic book.

So, in short, while this wasn't the greatest graphic novel I've read, and its religious message might not appeal to everyone, it was a pretty entertaining thing to read.