I was expecting something...different. The book (without cover) needs LOTS of editing. Continual font shifts (bold, big, small) and the amateurish footnotes and chapter notes gave the book a disjointed air. Indeed, the entire tenor of the tone was that of a final draft of an English major's term paper. The language was stilted, difficult to follow and very repetitive. This chap uses big words because they are big.

Vardis Fisher was the quintessential American man of the West, ruggedly individualist, a deep thinker and an excellent story teller. He was a rabid feminist and a patriotic atheist who undertook an exhaustive search for the truth. The result was the towering "Testament of Man", the series documenting the evolution of not only our person but our soul. Fisher focuses on sex and religion and takes a controversial Judeo-Christian pathway.

The first novel, Darkness and the Deep, has no dialogue, just the actions of the primitive proto-humans. Already present are the themes that recur in succeeding novels: the strong female, the frustrated male genius, the "Alpha" male leader, the temptress. In this review, Fisher is criticized not for his main thesis - that religion and sex and all the conflicts contained in both are the driving force of mankind - but for his inability to prove it. Anyone who gets through this "review" will be less - not more - inclined to go searching for this masterpiece. Ignore the commentary and get the series.