Lamb Among the Stars

The Lamb Among the Stars trilogy is a Christian science fiction series by Welsh author Chris Walley about the return of sin into the Lord's Assembly of Worlds. It examines how a civilization that has been at peace for thousands of years deals with the return of war, strife and hate. It primarily takes place on the planet at the edge of the Assembly, Farholme, and the primary heroes are Merral D'Avanos, a Farholme native, and Verofaza Laertes Enand, or Vero for short, a Sentinel (a guardian of sorts) from "Ancient Earth".

Walley manages to take a Christian worldview and turn it into a truly exciting series that would benefit greatly from a film or TV show due to his rather cinematic writing style.

There are three books in the trilogy:
 * The Shadow and the Night (originally two seperate books that were joined to avert Trilogy Creep)
 * The Dark Foundations
 * The Infinite Day

This series provides examples of: "Merrel: "You remember when you said there were people who would follow me to the gates of hell?"
 * AI Is a Crapshoot: Averted, sort of. One point of the series is that one can't reliably program morals into a computer. When an A.I. shows up, it's completely amoral and only cares about itself, but it realizes that being an Omnicidal Maniac is not a good idea. It always wants to be on the winning side, but won't do any active sabotage and will help someone if it doesn't hurt its plans in any way. This means that an A.I. isn't going to care if you're hurt, but that it won't hurt you if it isn't necessary.
 * All Planets Are Earthlike: Completely averted. All of the Assembly worlds, besides Earth itself, were originally sterile planets with no ability to support life until they were terraformed.
 * And I Must Scream: Nezhuala, at the end.
 * Apocalypse How
 * The aforementioned volcanic planet is a Class 6.
 * At the end of the trilogy, the villain tries to perform a Class X-4/Z (in that there is only 1 Universe to begin with) by
 * Crowning Moment of Awesome
 * The Assembly's terraforming.
 * The destruction of the.
 * The destruction of a massive army by agricultural satellites. Basically, every single Assembly victory.
 * Closing of The Dark Foundations:

Vero: "Yes. A figure of speech."

Merrel: "You'd better find them. That's where we're going.""

"Envoy: "Do you ?"
 * Crowning Moment of Heartwarming:
 * Merral scattering seeds across a
 * At the end, the Envoy to Betafor

Betafor (head hanging down): "Yes."

Envoy: "Then my Master would have you become more than you are.""


 * Crystal Spires and Togas: The Assembly, or at least, what it's trying to be.
 * Earthshattering Kaboom: The Gate midway through the first book.
 * Eldritch Abomination: The demons.
 * Face Heel Turn: Note that they aren't directly working with the Dominion (antagonists' society), but they are falling from what the good guys are supposed to be.
 * Clement, who probably ends up being a Principles Zealot, though not to the degree Delastro is.
 * Delastro, who definitely jumps off the slippery slope, becoming a Tautological Templar.
 * Gerry, after she finds out that her betrothed was killed due to an accident in war preparation.
 * Five-Man Band
 * The Hero: Merrel d'Avanos
 * The Lancer: Verofaza Laertes Enand, Sentinel.
 * The Smart Guy: Vero, again.
 * The Big Guy: Lloyd.
 * The Chick: Luke.
 * Sixth Ranger: Kezurmati Azeras.
 * Tagalong Kid: Anya
 * God: Who the Assembly worships.
 * Half-Human Hybrid:
 * Heel Face Turn: Azeras
 * Betafor is more a Heel Face Revolving Door, that ends up on the Heroic side at last.
 * Hyperspace Is a Scary Place: It turns out that Below-Space is actually
 * Also Inverted:
 * Kill Sat: Oddly, the Assembly has these. The first is the Vortex Blasters. They are for sterilizing an area where the terraformation has gone wrong, allowing the people of the planet to restart in that area.  The second is the Mass Blaster. They are apparently used to blast out sea beds. They are never used otherwise. The third is the Guardian Satellites. There are six in orbit around an Assembly planet, and they destroy any asteroids that show any sign of even looking at the planet they protect. One character mentions how she saw one of them vaporize a solid square kilometer of nickel-iron with minimal energy released.
 * Leaning On the Fourth Wall: "I'm glad I believe that the Most High graciously governs our affairs. That the fate of the assembly might hinge on us alone would fill me with extreme terror!" Also a Crowning Moment of Funny.
 * Mad Scientist: The Assembly has Gerry. She is incredibly distraught at losing her fiance, and begins to work on a polyvalent fusion bomb, the most powerful weapon in the entire setting. The Dominion has Ape: cybernetically augmented, can't speak, and the only one who understands the math and physics of how to bring about the end of reality; because of this, he can yell at the Emperor...and get away with it.
 * Meaningful Name: Farholme. The planet where the story takes place, and the farthest out from the center of the Assembly.
 * No Transhumanism Allowed: Justified. The Assembly apparently has the technology to replace lost limbs and such, but they don't allow anything greater than the patient's original abilities. This is because everyone's body is given by God and trying to be something else is saying that the Creator of everything is wrong.
 * Our Angels Are Different: The Envoy, as he is called, appears as a man with a large-brimmed hat who is almost constantly in shadow. This is also a case of Good Is Not Nice.
 * Of course, Envoy is a perfectly good translation of Angel....
 * Our Demons Are Different:
 * Portal Network: A sort of example. The Assembly uses Below-Space Gates to get around, but they are confined to space and when two gates are linked together, they cannot be separated. They actually lead through some sort of hyperspace that apparently has negative effects on humans, so the gates were designed which create a tunnel of normal-space leading through Below-Space. The gates are less of a portal network and more of a series of tunnel entrances.
 * Take That: "Why one popular series [of books dealing with sorcery] turned out to be nothing more than a fiction for kids!
 * A more subtle one, but Walley says that the final judgement and separation would be folly to write about. Unlike, say, the Left Behind series.
 * Technical Pacifist: All the Assembly characters as they are willing to fight to protect the Assembly, but would prefer not to have to fight at all.
 * Technology Levels: The precise levels are somewhat hard to figure out, but the Assembly is incredibly advanced, despite focusing on peace.
 * Terraform: Is stated to be the mission of the Assembly. Their method of terraforming worlds (referred to as Made Worlds) takes a very long time, and after 10,000 years of peace, there is still not one complete terraformation. They are also somewhat unstable in that sometimes it goes wrong. At one point, Vero mentions that the Made Worlders sleep in life-support suits in case the atmosphere vanishes or something. One planet is mention that had all the settlements buried in volcanic ash after the planet's core failed.
 * That's No Moon:
 * The Corruption: The evil that begins to seep through Farholme. It honestly acts like a spiritual virus with symptoms like: Fear of Death (In a setting that has Heaven explicitly exist), excessive jealously in the sides of a town split in two by a huge cliff and willingness to lie, cheat, hate and disregard the laws of the Assembly. Doesn't sound too bad, until you realize that the Assembly has been most without these things for eleven thousand years.
 * The first sign of coming trouble is a small, white lie. And it horrifies the main protagonist, because this not only just is not done, it hasn't been done for 11 millennia.
 * The Rebellion: Subversion. Evil rebellion against a good government. Way back when the Assembly had only begun terraforming Alpha Centauri, a rebellion popped up because a faction of the Assembly wanted to adjust people to the planets as opposed to adjusting the planets for the people. Long story short, Assembly wins, blows up Alpha Centauri (which is still radioactive 10,000 years later) and has to blow the gate to Centauri.
 * Trilogy Creep: Averted. As stated above, the first two books were edited together to form one book. The original titles were The Shadow at Evening and The Power of the Night.
 * X Meets Y:
 * Word of God says he didn't know anything about Warhammer 40 K until after it was mentioned on the Facebook fan group in relation to the Dominion.
 * Word of God says he didn't know anything about Warhammer 40 K until after it was mentioned on the Facebook fan group in relation to the Dominion.