It was a little hard for me to follow at times because Isobel sometimes makes illogical decisions. The worldbuilding is intricate and does evoke a visceral sense of what can happen to our planet if greed takes over. But I didn't like how the narrative dealt with Isobel's puberty-related bodily discoveries; I found it quite unsettling, particularly the way Isobel successfully ignores her own mistreatment and utilizes that experience to learn about herself. I had mixed feelings.

The "Ministry" is a very interesting, partly controversial work of fiction, exploration of complex ethical and philosophical themes. Through the struggles of Father Creen and the other characters, the novel raises questions about the nature of faith, the abuse of power, and the search for meaning in an uncertain world. The characters in "Ministry" are well-developed and multi-dimensional, each with their motivations and flaws. From the enigmatic Father Creen to the charismatic but morally ambiguous leaders of the Ministry, every character feels authentic and fully realized.
The pacing is a bit off for my taste, but nevertheless, I really enjoyed the reading experience.

Isobel aka Christmas is a young girl surviving a post apocalyptic south after the death of her beloved father. Armed with knowledge of the way the world used to be and intuition on the way the world can be, she sets out on her Ministry to share the good world. Along her journey, she meets all sorts of odd characters, both friends and foe, all of whom are on their own journey of survival through the barren landscapes. From a child's POV, readers get a unique insight into what the end of the world may look like from an innocent perspective.

This book includes:
- TW: multiple instances of child SA
- found family
- strong religious themes related to roman catholic ideology
- life after the end of the world
- urban jungle
- TW: many uses of the n word

"Ministry" is unique and interesting. The author does a good job of really giving us the perspective of an innocent child in a very dangerous world. The world building is complex and does feel like a visceral experience with what our world could become if humanity succumbs to its greed. However, I was not a fan of the way the narration interacted with Isobel's discovery of her own body through puberty, it was extremely discomforting to me especially in the way that Isobel is effectively oblivious to her own abuses and uses those experience to self discover. For that reason this book was a DNF for me at ~50% and I will be giving it 3 stars. The cover of "Ministry" is absolutely stunning though, kudos to the designer, every book should have a cover like this.

I received this eBook as an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley, AW Hill, and Touchpoint Press for the opportunity to review this book. This review has been posted to my GoodReads; check out my profile for more https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/62314863

Thanks AW Hill, Touchpoint Press, and Netgalley for this ARC.

I found this novel had little in the way of differentiating the characters and that took me out of the story.

I received this from NetGalley in exchange for a thoughtful and honest review:

Unfortunately, I do not think that this book is for me. We start off by meeting thirteen year old Christmas, who has just lost her father. This is about where my understanding for what was going on stopped. This book is told in first-person perspective, meaning that "I" was used to start almost every sentence in this 400 page novel, which was about 200 pages too many. This book frames our main narrator as a vessel for prophecies we are to believe are meant to help save the society in which our main character finds herself in, a society that I still do not believe I have a clear grasp of. From my understanding, this book takes place in the somewhat far out future, however the books lack of description of the surroundings that Christmas finds herself in lended to my confusion. Christmas, or the last good thing her father remembered (hence her name) is somewhat of an unreliable narrator, and the first person perspective further does not help establishing our heroine (if we can call her that) in this dystopian plane. While I think the author has some good ideas and that a book that mirrors Joan of Arc can be interesting, I am still too lost in my own thoughts and feelings about "Ministry" to begin to untangle what I thought did and did not work.

(I was given an arc of this book through Netgalley in return for an honest review).
Overall Rating:
-Characters: 4/5
-Plot: 2/5
-Setting: 3/5
-Description: 3/5
-Enjoyment: 2/5
Ministry is about an orphaned girl who has the “knowledge” and ultimately leads a rebellion against the “Architect” who is responsible for pushing the lower classes out of the city and generally just causing inequality between humans.
The premise of the book is very original and sounds like it could be a good Joan of Arc inspired story, however it comes up short in terms of action and plot. I could barely get through the first 100 pages and found that the author included unnecessarily uncomfortable scenes that had nothing to do with the plot. The characters were one of the only things I liked about the story. The story wasn’t for me, but if you like science fiction or dystopian type novels with the classic “girl leads rebellion plot line” this book is for you.

The tagline for this book is: A world at the mercy of an AI overlord. Who will lead the rebellion?

Enter Isobel Lemont. An orphaned 13 year old girl who believes that the overlord, The Architect, is a liar. He incited the death of a large portion of human with his false claims that the low-class human population should be ousted from their cities and left to slowly perish along with the diminishing lands and resources. Isobel believes that that land is already growing again and that so too can the people desperate to survive. She just needs to get other people to believe it too.

Isobel leaves the only home she's ever known when her loving father dies unexpectedly. He has always taught her that when he dies, that's when her ministry begins. So she sets out into the harsh dystopian land and quickly becomes the figurehead of the rebellion. Why? Mainly because she's pretty and has a decent vocabulary. She also talks to the Saints once or twice that tell her she's a messenger. She has the knowledge. Other clan leaders seem to recognize this about her.

I actually found the writing and moderate pacing to be engaging even though Isobel doesn't actually do anything. A lot of things happen to her. A lot of people desire her. A lot of people love her and want to be with her. But her acts as a messenger are pretty much wait until someone tells her what to do. She makes a few gut decisions based on her knowing of things, but largely lets everyone else in rebellion do the heavy lifting. Her skill lies in her story telling and preaching and she does sway many people to her spiritual cause.

And "everyone" includes a very large cast of characters but written and described so well that I was able to keep everyone straight and really come to care about them, even very minor characters. The rebellion is responsible for plotting the takedown of the Architect. They must gather resources, train in combat and weapons handling, get access to the barricaded city in Atlanta, engineer devices for transportation, and so much more. But Isobel, she preaches and sits in on operational strategy meetings but mostly she really, really likes to dance.

I tend to loathe female perspectives written by men and this story is not without a misstep here or there but I do think Hill has some major writing skills. He captured despair, hope, love, longing, religion, worship, racism, violence, agony and so much more, in a way that really makes it stand out among other stories in this genre.

That said, this book has some very dark themes. Insert many trigger warnings: violence, torture, s/a, rape, gore, death, child abuse, self-harm, amputation. I would not recommend this to anyone without making that very clear.

Despite my small issues with certain aspects, I did read all 580 pages and found myself in tears not ready to say goodbye to these characters. Thank you NetGalley and A.W. Hill for the opportunity to read and review Ministry. #Ministry #NetGalley #AWHill

Think the coolest and scariest thing of this book is that we could be at any time in the situation described in it. I think it is pretty clever to write a book with a story that everybody can relate to but I think the reaction to it will depend on how seriously people take the topic discussed.
I personally would have been terrified if we have to go through what the characters here had to.

Ministry is a dystopic, si-fi story based on a real threat to our planet.
In this story A.W. Hill writes of how several man-made factors contributes in to rendering the planet almost unfit for life. So much so that at one point the powerfull deiceed to select, literally, those who can survive and condemning everyone else.

So our heroing, Isobel, like many more, grows up the "ass-end", as she calls it, of a city, surviving only thanks to garbage and leftowers from before the Expulsion (the event in which a selectet few were chosen to survive, while everyone else was literally expulsed from the few liveable places left).

Once her father dies suddenly, Isobel begins her quest, she has visions of the Saints, whom she had only read of with her fater, which apprear to her to offer guidance and councel towards the goal of her journey: finding the Architect (the main villain obc.) and ither persuading that life might still grow on the now barren planet, or cast him down.

The story is fairly original per se, I found it a bit difficult to follow, someties Isobel makes decisons that makes no sense, like in the very beginning, when her father dies she immediately leaves with nothing the shelter they shared for a random, never-before-seen place with no recouces, no food, nothing to warm herself with, etch.
The character themlseves in the end are kind of similar to onw another, they do not really stand up, and in general i found that the writing style didn't keep me glued to the page.

I confess I haven’t read much fantasy since Lord of the Rings; in my “grown-up years” I’ve gravitated toward reality-based fiction. A.W. Hill’s Ministry, however, taps into my youthful romance with the J.R.R. Tolkien trilogy, and kicks it up a notch!

The word ‘enchanting’ may seem inappropriate for a post-apocalyptic adventure that begins on the “ass-end” of a burned out city, with a dead, frozen-stiff father. But, trust me, early on in this sprawling novel you will be warmly under Ministry’s spell.

Much like Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, life in “the valley” begins as a dark dream story, recounted by a naif, with fierce antagonists lurking around every corner. The girl’s childhood name is Christmas.

Isobel Christmas Lemont was born on Christmas day, and in the year of the Expulsion, along with her mother and father is among the expelled. Accelerated global warming – on which Hill goes into only essential detail throughout this book – has moved the earth into a new system: “the temperature got higher, the seas poured in, and things stopped growing.”

The diminished natural resources turn the population into the Elect (or “Tops”) and the Atrophines - the banished ones. The Elect survive on algae, cultivated in heavily barricaded cities all now on saltwater ports. The Atrophines survive basically on pre-apocalyptic garbage.

During the Expulsion, Isobel loses her mother. But she is doted on and educated by her father with the aid of the Big Book - the Random House Illustrated Encyclopedia. After ‘Daddy’ dies on a foraging mission in sub-freezing weather, our heroine, now experiencing visitations from the saints she learned about in the Big Book, strikes out to find sanctuary.

To summarize this 573 page adventure in a brief synopsis would be as daunting as the trials that await young Isobel Lemont. Suffice it to say that Isobel's "ministry" is finding the Architect, who has taken control of the world, and either bringing him around or taking him down. Her power is simply speaking truth and hope – that “things are growing again.” She spreads her conviction to as many souls as she can reach, her message often accompanied by music and dance! Eventually Isobel builds an army of followers. Music plays a spellbinding role in this novel and, like other readers, I envisioned a cinematic version of Ministry from beginning to end.

So, what makes Hill’s tale of adversity in a dystopian world stand out from the others, the “Left Behind”s in our current zeitgeist? It’s the visceral paean to humanity in Hill’s voice, often through the dialogue of Lemont. Her manner is impish but intimate, her speech so unblinkingly honest it evokes a child just learning to talk. Each well-crafted character we encounter along her pilgrimage adds a poignant level of humanness to this often thrilling journey. There is a purity of mind and indomitable spirit infusing Ministry that make it a truly exhilarating read.

In fact, there are times when Hill’s prose is so timeless and true, you could mistake it for something you once came across in classic English literature. But then you read the passage again, and think “no - this is just what good writing sounds like.”

I'm marking this one as a DNF. The story was difficult to get into, I really enjoyed the premise but the execution didn't seem to go very well. Everything kind of melded together.

An interesting concept that unfortunately did not hold my attention. The characters were all over the place and yet all seemed far too similar. The plot was slow and the main character far too whiney. Unfortunately it was a DNF for me. I’m sure it will find its audience though.