This book is an important contribution to the study of religion in Angola. The book focuses on Tokoism, a Christian movement that began after Simão Toko (1918–1984) claimed he had been in contact with the Holy Ghost in 1949 and started a movement that opposed both European political and spiritual oppression and African witchcraft. Toko, who was chosen by the Baptist mission among the Bakongo to undertake secondary education in Luanda after having previously worked as a servant and excelled as a student at the mission, eventually left the Baptist church. Tokoism affirmed ‘an African and racialized ethos’ (p. 71) and was persecuted and marginalized as a ‘sect’ by the Belgian and Portuguese authorities under colonial rule. The same occurred under the independent MPLA government. Much has been written on Tokoism by colonial administrators, Christian missionaries, the movement's members, and Angolan intellectuals. However, Blanes' book is the first extensive historical and ethnographic work to consider it in its transnational character and particularity – and not as an offshoot of Kimbanguism.

A Prophetic Trajectory draws on research in the archives of the Portuguese political police (PIDE) and Portuguese Overseas Ministry as well as on extended fieldwork in Tokoist churches in Lisbon, Luanda, and London. The book is divided in two sections: “Itineraries” considers the trajectory of the prophet and the places related to it, while “Heritages” deals with the unfolding of Tokoism after Angolan independence and its transnational expansion and reverse mission. The book dwells on Toko's successive imprisonments, exiles, and persecution and describes how Tokoism was progressively recognised by the Angolan state as a religion that struggled for spiritual liberation and peace. By addressing the incorporation of Toko's spirit by Bishop Nunes in the 2000s, Blanes interestingly expands the notion of trajectory to include the agency of spirits.

In focusing on the ‘agency and power’ that ‘people such as the Tokoists … can obtain from [their] narrative regimes’ (p. 45), the book presents itself as part of the composite picture that results from the various narratives on Toko and Tokoism. Blanes reflects on the movements' conceptions of time, history, suffering and belonging. However, Toko's trajectory lies at the core of the movement's division into different churches and allegiances, and Blanes pays special attention to divergence, dissidence and conflict. In a polyphonic narrative, the reader is able to follow the trajectory of the movement and its prophet as it intertwined with the changing contexts of Angolan history.

There is plenty of ethnography on the movement's existence and persecution during colonialism, conflict in the 1980s, religious liberalisation in the 1990s, and its increasing role in the present religious scene. Blanes looks at the opposition between ethnicity and unity that shaped Toko's discourse on behalf of ethnic and generational unification in spite of the church's initial Bakongo background. However, the structuring of Tokoism into ‘tribes’ and ‘classes’ echoes the disjunction between national unity and ethnicity that was an important element of the dynamics of the Angolan war, and the picture of Toko ‘in the bush’ makes one wonder about the relationship Tokoism established with the contending parties during the war.

The book's main accomplishment is its rich and multi-layered ethnography of ritual and daily life in Tokoist churches, the movement's trajectory, and the politics of religion in contemporary Angola. Moreover, A Prophetic Trajectory importantly contributes to a better understanding of religion in a context in which the category of ‘sect’, a colonial legacy, has been used as an accusation against non-mainstream religious movements.