Killing Lions came out of a set of weekly phone calls. Sam Eldredge was in his twenties, working as a writer and trying to sort out what to do with his life. His father, John Eldredge, was on the other end. The book is those conversations, cleaned up and organized. Thomas Nelson published it in September 2014, 208 pages.
That origin is the whole point and it is what makes the book work. This is not a father delivering a lecture. It is a young man asking real questions and an older one trying to answer them honestly, sometimes without a clean answer.
What they actually talk about
The subjects are the ones that occupy a man in his twenties and that most books for men skip. Money. Whether to marry, and how you know. Pursuing beauty. Chasing a dream versus taking the job. Finding something real with God rather than inherited religion. And underneath all of it, the question of how you come to have a life that is actually yours.
Sam Eldredge went on to launch AndSonsMagazine.com with his two brothers. John directs Ransomed Heart. Both are credited as authors and both voices are genuinely present in the text.
Who it is really for
Two audiences, and the book says so. The son who never got this kind of fathering, and the father who is realizing there are things he has never said out loud to his own sons.
The second one is the underrated use. A lot of men in their forties and fifties have no idea how to start these conversations with a grown son. Reading the book alongside him gives you a way in that does not require you to manufacture a speech.
Honest notes
The previous version of this review put a sentence in quotation marks and attributed it to a review team member: a line about the book challenging his understanding of walking with Christ. There was no review team and nobody said that. It was invented, and it has been removed.
That review also credited the book with reflection questions, prayers, and an accompanying journal. I could not verify that any of those are in the paperback. Check the Amazon preview before buying it for a group.
The conversational format is a real strength and a real limit. It rambles the way conversations do. If you want a structured argument with numbered points, this is not that, and some readers find it circles without landing.
One thing worth knowing
John Eldredge’s work draws criticism, mostly aimed at Wild at Heart: loose handling of Scripture, and language about God taking risks that critics read as open theism. Those concerns are laid out in our review of Wild at Heart.
Killing Lions is a softer target for that criticism, because it is a conversation rather than a theological argument, and it does not make the same claims. Read it as wisdom from a father, weigh it against Scripture yourself, and you will be fine.
Who should read it
A man in his twenties who feels behind, unsure, or alone in it. A father with a son in that stage who wants a way to start talking. Good read-together material.
Skip it if you want a systematic book, or if you are past the season it addresses and looking for something on midlife instead.