Fearless

Last night I finished reading Fearless by Robin Parrish. And I came away from it ... well, a little disturbed, truth be told.

It's funny, this is the book that kind of shamed me into making sure that I always read the books for the CSFF Blog Tour. A year ago, we featured this book and I had to sheepishly admit that I hadn't read it. I was intrigued by what other people had to say and so I added it to my list of "books I gotta read at some point." Since then, I've made sure to get my grubby little hands on every book we're going to review as part of the blog tour so that I wouldn't have to plead ignorance.

Having read it now, though, I wonder what I would have said a year ago.

The premise is still intriguing. Grant Borrows, the prophesied "Bringer," and his team of Ringwearers are acting as superheroes as the world spirals out of control. They use the powers granted to them by the Rings of Dominion to try to keep people safe, all the while trying to figure out what plans the mysterious Secretum of Six holds for them.

On the plus side, Parrish crafts some very action packed sequences. It's almost like reading an action movie. He also weaves in some great mysteries and answers most (but not all) of the reader's questions, thus keeping them satisfied but also getting them on the hook to read Merciless, the final book in the series.

But for all of its good points, there was something that bothered me about these books that I finally hit on as I finished this one. God seems to be completely absent from this so-called Christian fiction. As near as I can tell, there's only oblique references to God every now and then. And I can't recall a single instance of anyone talking about Christ.

Now I'm not saying that I expect a full sermon in every Christian fiction book I read. That would turn me off. But by the end of this book, it was almost as if Parrish were simply borrowing from Biblical stories, lifting concepts and ideas as he needed them.

And maybe I'm reading into it too much, but it almost seemed like Parrish was advocating some sort of "bootstrapping" spirituality, that it's all up to us and the choices we make. It almost seemed like Parrish was cribbing from a pop psychology book rather than grounding his story in any sort of Christian theology.

Maybe I'm overreacting. Maybe I missed it. Or maybe Parrish is saving the Christian stuff for the final book. From a story standpoint, this series has been an interesting ride. From a faith standpoint, not so much.

CSFF Blog Tour: Vanished Day Three

Yesterday I mentioned the hurting, believable characters in Vanished. The day before, I talked about the action-packed plot. Today I want to talk about something that was conspicuously absent from the story. Or at least, something that I noticed was missing: a moral to the story.

A lot of Christian fiction is usually built around a central message. The author has a theme or an idea they want to share about the faith and they do their best to weave it into the plot. Sometimes they're successful and the message can be seen as an organic outgrowth of the plot. Other times, they're not so successful and it feels like you're being bludgeoned with the blunt end of the premise.

Vanished is a bit different. It follows a trend I've noticed in Christian fiction lately where the Christian elements are a bit more subtle and muted. Some of the characters are Christian. Yes, there's a Christian foundation to the plot. But there's no preachiness involved. And if there's a "lesson" about the faith to be had, I'm afraid I have to admit that I missed it.

That's not a bad thing. I've always thought that there were two different kinds of Christian fiction. There's what I call "propoganda." And then there's "FTHTBC" (pronounced fith-ta-bic).

Propoganda is easy to spot. It's blatant in its Christianity. It's produced by and for the Christian community with some sort of lesson for its readers to learn. Outsiders will probably not touch propoganda unless it generates a lot of publicity (i.e. the Left Behind series), it's recommended to them by someone inside the community, or it's written by an author they know and like.

FTHTBC, on the other hand, is "fiction that happens to be Christian." It's very different from propoganda in that the Christian content is more subtle. It's there, it's foundational, but it's not entirely central to the theme. There might not even be a central Christian message. It's simply fiction that stems from a Christian worldview. A great example of this is J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. While Tolkien was a devout Christian, he despised allegory and symbolism in literature and, inspite of what many people claim now, never intended his trilogy to have any sort of Christian theme or message. But because of his strong faith, the Christian elements bled through.

Both kinds are fine. I'm not judging one over the other. The propoganda has its place. So does the FTHTBC. Both can be equally good, so long as the author focuses on his or her craft and writes the best story possible.

I'm not entirely sure how to classify Mackel's Vanished. In some ways, the book is definitely FTHTBC. While there are Christian elements to the book, they're not very blatant. The characters are Christian. They rely on their faith in the wake of the bomb blast. But I was left scratching my head for a moral to the story. Part of my confusion might stem from the fact that the story isn't over yet. The plot will continue in the next book, and so there might be more of a theme and/or message then, enought to nudge this into the propoganda camp.

For now, though, Vanished can be pretty properly identified as FTHTBC. The Christianity is there but it's not as blatant as some. It's a foundation that you don't necessarily have to notice.

But perhaps I'm wrong. Go and see if the other blog tour participants have a different opinion:

Brandon Barr
Justin Boyer
Jackie Castle
CSFF Blog Tour
Gene Curtis
D. G. D. Davidson
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Beth Goddard
Andrea Graham
Todd Michael Greene
Katie Hart
Christopher Hopper
Joleen Howell
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Mike Lynch
Terri Main
Margaret
Shannon McNear
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Deena Peterson
Rachelle
Steve Rice
Ashley Rutherford
Mirtika or Mir's Here
Chawna Schroeder
Stuart Stockton
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Linda Wichman
Laura Williams
Timothy Wise

CSFF Blog Tour: Vanished Day Two

In yesterday's review of Vanished by Kathryn Mackel, I mentioned her vulnerable, believable characters. The two central characters, Jason Logan and Kaya de los Santos have both gone through rough times and because of that, they help charge up the story.

Both Jason and Kaya come from failed marriages, ones that fell apart for vastly different reasons. Both have suffered professional set-backs that Mackel reveals gradually through the telling of the story. They've both been battered and beaten down and they're now trying to put their lives back together again. And then, like I said yesterday, everyday life disappears in the wake of the bomb blast.

There are some very raw emotions lurking in their past and it helps make the story more compelling. It's refreshing to see people who are so real. These are no saints with only slightly dinged-up halos. These are people who have fallen and fallen hard and desperately in need of healing. These are people we can all relate to.

Be sure to check out what the other blog tour participants are saying:

Brandon Barr
Justin Boyer
Jackie Castle
CSFF Blog Tour
Gene Curtis
D. G. D. Davidson
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Beth Goddard
Andrea Graham
Todd Michael Greene
Katie Hart
Christopher Hopper
Joleen Howell
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Mike Lynch
Terri Main
Margaret
Shannon McNear
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Deena Peterson
Rachelle
Steve Rice
Ashley Rutherford
Mirtika or Mir's Here
Chawna Schroeder
Stuart Stockton
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Linda Wichman
Laura Williams
Timothy Wise

CSFF Blog Tour: Vanished Day One

This month we're looking at Vanished by Kathryn Mackel.

I've been a fan of Mackel's writing since her Birthright Project came out. I'm still kind of in mourning that she wasn't able to completely finish that series (at least, not yet), so it was good to pick up another one of her books and look it over.

Mackel does not disappoint with this one. The town of Barcester, Massachusets, is rocked by a horrific disaster as bombs detonate all around them. The target is apparently the high-speed train that runs underneath their streets. But in the aftermath of the explosions, a strange mist has cut them off from the rest of the world. People who wander into the mist can't make it through. What happened? Where has everyone gone? And how can they find their way home?

Mackel's book starts with a bang (literally) and the excitement doesn't stop. She has created some vulnerable, believable characters (more on that tomorrow) and tossed them into an impossible situation. How can they deal with the wounded, the dying, and the dead when no outside help can make it.

Mackel also leaves enough questions unanswered to make this a great first entry in a new series. She never explains exactly what happened to Barcester. You have a good idea of what might have contributed to it, but the dilemma isn't solved. I know I wanted to keep going to find out what would happen next.

So if you're looking for an exciting ride, one with some very strong speculative overtones, you can't go wrong with this one.

Check out what everyone else is saying:

Brandon Barr
Justin Boyer
Jackie Castle
CSFF Blog Tour
Gene Curtis
D. G. D. Davidson
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Beth Goddard
Andrea Graham
Todd Michael Greene
Katie Hart
Christopher Hopper
Joleen Howell
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Mike Lynch
Terri Main
Margaret
Shannon McNear
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Deena Peterson
Rachelle
Steve Rice
Ashley Rutherford
Mirtika or Mir's Here
Chawna Schroeder
Stuart Stockton
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Linda Wichman
Laura Williams
Timothy Wise

Writers of the Future Volume 23

I realized a while ago that I need to branch out in terms of my reading habits. I mostly read Christian fiction, and mostly speculative Christian fiction at that. But there's a lot of other stuff out there, so I decided that I would try to broaden my horizons. To do so, I picked up a copy of L. Ron Hubbard presents Writers of the Future Vol. XXIII. And even though Hubbard's name is in big bold print on the cover, I didn't make the connection with Scientology until I started reading it.

That doesn't mean that there's talk of Xenu or engrams or Tom Cruise in this book. Instead, it's a collection of short stories from a contest entitled (oddly enough) "L. Ron Hubbard's Writers of the Future Contest." According to the rules in the back of the book, entrants cannot have published a novel, book, novella, or more than three short stories professionally.

By and large, these were great stories. Very creative, well written. There were a few that didn't quite do it for me. For example, "The Stone Cipher" by Tony Pi irritated me. He had a dynamite premise: all over the world, statues are "speaking." Their lips are moving at a glacial rate. What are they trying to tell us? The problem is that the main character makes several leaps in logic that, as far as I was concerned, weren't warranted, leaps that Pi then treated as gospel truth.

"The Phlogiston Age" by Corey Brown was another that just didn't do it for me. I think it was a steam punk story of sorts, but it just kind of fell flat.

But there were some great stories in this collection. I would eagerly recommend "The Sun God at Dawn, Rising from a Lotus Blossom" by Andrea Kail. Let me hit you with the premise: King Tut writes letters to Abraham Lincoln. Bizarre, right? But Kail pulls it off and has a pretty decent twist at the end.

Also memorable was "Obsidian Shards" by Aliette de Bodard, a story set in Mayan times (I think. Admittedly, Central American history is not one of my fortes). It's a murder mystery that was really well done.

But all of the entries in this book are worth your time, even the ones that didn't quite work out for me. Needless to say, I'll be adding some names to my list of authors to watch.

So You Think You Can ... wait a sec

Jill and I are trying to watch So You Think You Can Dance. Emphasis on trying. Minnesota weather is acting up and they keep interrupting the show. But not what I'm here to say.

Jill says that if I don't stop goofing off, I can't watch anymore. That'd be a shame, because I really enjoy the dancing. But I have to get this off my chest:












Mary Murphy and Skeletor: separated at birth?

That is all.

Bioshock

I just finished playing through Bioshock and I have to say, it was a fun ride.

For those unfamiliar with this game, the premise is this: you are on an airplane that crashes into the middle of the ocean. But luckily for you, there's a strange island with a lighthouse on it. You go into the lighthouse, only to discover a bathysphere that takes you to an undersea city called Rapture. Apparently a man named Andrew Ryan conceived of Rapture as a place where people could keep what they earned without giving any of it to the government, God, or the poor, where scientists could carry out research unfettered by the petty dictates of common ethics, and people could live in a utopia.

Needless to say, things didn't work out quite that way.

The Rapture you find yourself in is a devastated battleground. Roving bands of splicers, people who have fiddled with their genetic code using a substance called ADAM, wreak havoc and try to kill you. And through it all are lumbering giants called Big Daddies leading girls called Little Sisters through the deserted streets. You have allies. You have enemies. Your goal is to pick through the debris of Rapture and try to escape alive.

I've been hearing great things about this game ever since it came out. Games For Windows gave it high marks and I can see why. From what I understand, the game is somehow based on Ayn Rand's objectivism and is supposed to be a critique of it somehow. I have to admit, I didn't get that part. But that's okay.

In terms of story, the people who created Bioshock did a great job. Rapture is a crazy place to visit with a definite storyline behind what happened in this intended utopia. Plus the journey you go through is a harrowing one. There's a massive twist in the middle (I won't say what it is) that I kind of saw coming, but I got so many details wrong I was simply delighted when it happened. In some ways, it reminded me of Knights of the Old Republic. Storywise, that is.

My only complaint is that it was too easy on easy. Yes, I know, I'm a wimp and should have started on medium, but I wanted to get a feel for the controls and how everything worked, so I played it on easy. By the time I reached the end, I could drop Big Daddies with the greatest of ease and the final boss fight took all of about three minutes. To put it another way, I never died. Not once. Usually in a game like this, I'm used to failing at least a dozen times on the way to the end.

But that doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy myself. I did. And yes, I'll be playing it again on medium. There's another ending to the story I have to see yet and I want to see if the Big Daddies are harder to drop on medium. But it might be a while. I've got something else that will be occupying my time starting next Tuesday.

Who Stole My Church?

This past Sunday, one of my parishioners came up to me after the services. She said she knew I liked reading and she had a book for me. She handed me a copy of Who Stole My Church? by Gordon MacDonald. She said it really challenged her. I can see why.

MacDonald's book is a treatise on how individual congregations can best meet the needs of those around it under the extremely thin disguise of a story. There are characters and something of a plot, but it's mostly all a conceit for MacDonald to get his point across.

The plot, if it can be called such, is this: MacDonald places himself as the pastor of a fictional church, one that recently had something of a set-back. The leadership tried to pass a series of changes to the way the church did things, only to have some of the oldest and most faithful members push back. MacDonald, rather than rail on them, suggests they meet to discuss the changes and why he feels they're necessary. The title comes from the plaintive cry of one of those members at that first meeting.

If we're trying to judge this book as fiction, it falls flat. As a matter of fact, I'd even be tempted to say that this shouldn't be called a "novel" or a "story" or anything like it. It's more like a Platonic dialogue. The characters, while distinct, are foils for MacDonald. They eventually come around to enthusiastically see things his way. The only holdout is depicted as a reactionary and something of a jerk (more on why this bothers me in a bit).

In terms of nonfiction, this book gave me a lot to think about. Lutherans (especially my kind) are a stubborn bunch. There's an old joke that goes, "How many Lutherans does it take to change a lightbulb?" "CHANGE!?!?!" We tell that amongst ourselves because it's true.

But MacDonald makes a strong case that sometimes, change is not only necessary, it's healthy and good. Every congregation should take the time to reevaluate what they're doing at one time or another, if for no other reason than to make sure that everything is still working the way it should. That process may be painful, especially if people discover that something isn't working right, but then, it's sometimes necessary to go through "growing pains."

But there is a problem with the way MacDonald presented his argument. Since he did so through a story, he could simply have all the characters come to agree with him in the end. They all become "enlightened" enough about his new, better way of doing things that they all fall in line and become enthusiastic for the new ways. The only person who doesn't is depicted in a very harsh light afterwards, so much so that MacDonald insinuates that he's almost an abusive husband and not really a Christian.

That's unfortunate, because it leaves the impression that if you don't agree with MacDonald's analysis of how churches should adapt to the 21st century, you're somehow less of a Christian. I would strongly disagree with that assessment. It might have been better if some of his "discussion partners" had ended the journey unconvinced but willing to go along with it. Or better, if some of them made it clear that they still didn't like it, still thought he was wrong, but weren't going to leave the congregation. Simply put, MacDonald set himself up for everyone to pat him on the back for his keen insight.

Had he presented his argument in a standard, non-fiction sort of way, people could evaluate his ideas and take them or leave them. Now, with the fictional story format, a person who doesn't quite buy his arguments is left with the impression that perhaps the problem isn't with the ideas, it's with them and their faith. Not cool.

In spite of that, it's still an intriguing read. I can only hope that more people read it. For people of the younger generation, it's a good insight into the way the older generation thinks. For people of the older generation, it's an argument for why "We've always done it that way!" isn't a valid argument. And for pastors, it's defintiely food for thought about how we should conduct our various ministries.

Lord of the Rings

Late last night I finished my second go-through of The Lord of the Rings. I originally read the whole thing about eight years ago before the first movie of the trilogy came out. About a month or two ago, I watched the the trilogy again and decided it was time to reread Tolkien's original.

I'm not sure what I can say about this that hasn't already been said. It's an epic masterpiece. Tolkien's language is poetic and his voice fits the mythic nature of the story.

At the same time, though, I couldn't help but wonder what would have happened if Tolkien had tried to publish this book in modern times. How would a modern editor have reacted to it?

For example, Tolkien begins the book with what's basically a big info dump about hobbit history and culture. It's nothing but telling with little to no showing. As I waded through it, I kept hearing a nagging voice in the back of my head telling me, "Show, don't tell!"

The pacing of the first book also could have used some tightening up. The pace was way too slow, seeing as the story ranged over several years, from Bilbo's "eleventy-first" birthday up until the day when Frodo left the Shire for Mordor. This first book unbalances the entire story, since we sprint through those years, while the other two books seem to last just a month or two.

Recently someone on The Late Nite Jengajam commented that Peter Jackson did the right thing in the way he edited the story to adapt it into the three movies. I can't say for sure if The Lord of the Rings would have been as popular or beloved if it had been edited to suit modern tastes. Who knows? But I can say this with confidence: if you haven't taken this journey through Middle Earth yet, you should.