And the winner is...

And the big winner for a copy of The Enclave by Karen Hancock is Rachel Starr Thomson! I've sent her an e-mail to let her know. Thanks to everyone who entered. See most of you next month for the next blog tour!

CSFF Blog Tour: The Enclave Day Three

Hmmmm. It seems I may have stirred something up yesterday with my comments. A little something, good earnest debate. And that's the sign of a good book, right? It gets us thinking and talking about stuff like this.

The discussion has been so interesting for me that I decided to chuck out what I was going to write about today (namely whether or not the cartoonish supervillainy of Director Swain is a negative portrayal of atheists or not) to address some of the points raised by people who stopped by my little corner of the Internet.

Jason hit the nail on the head yesterday. I mentioned the three books I could remember that dealt with Nephilim. Well, I forgot about a few others. The sheer number of books I've read in recent years that focus on the Nephilim and Genesis 6 in general doesn't necessarily mean that there shouldn't be any more. Perhaps I overstated my case there. My problem is that the previous books were, for the most part, bad. So bad that they left a lingering bad taste in my mouth, one that tainted my enjoyment of The Enclave. That's not Karen Hancock's fault. Not by a long shot. But it's the reality of the situation.

Becky Miller (hail the Blog Overlord! Sorry, do you want me to stop that?) also stirred up some more thoughts with her comment, where she suggested that the sons of God and daughters of men mentioned in Genesis 6 might refer to unfallen children of Adam and Eve, produced in Eden before the Fall. A tantalizing theory, that. I'm not sure if I buy it, but I'd read a book about that in a heartbeat. Why? Because it's a new theory, one that gives me something to think about.

That, perhaps, is why I'm having such a negative reaction to Nephilim. Whenever they're portrayed, it's almost always the angel/human hybrids. It's further evidence of the unfortunate homoginization of Christian fiction (and not just speculative fiction) where doctrinal positions that don't fit into certain molds get thrown out completely. I mentioned something about this back when the CSFF blog tour did Tuck.

Maybe this stems from the fact that I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Lutheran, but I really do wish that the industry were open to ... dare I say it ... dissenting viewpoints. Why is it that the Nephilim are always human/angel hybrids? Why does fictional eschatology always hew so closely to dispensational premillenialism (with the exception of Chris Walley's excellent postmillennial books)? Why can't we, as Christians, be more open to people with doctrinal differences, if for no other reason so we can be exposed to other ideas, other concepts, if for no other reason than we take an honest look at our own dearly held beliefs a little more critically?

You know, maybe I owe Karen Hancock an apology. Like I wrote a few lines up, none of this is her fault. She approached this from where she comes from and did so honestly and openly. Good for her. And like I wrote on Monday, I am a fan of her other books. This one just didn't do it for me, maybe because I have too much baggage to go with it.

Well, enough out of me. Just a reminder, today is the final day to toss your name into the hat to win a copy of The Enclave.

Go see what the rest of the tourists have to say:

Brandon Barr
Jennifer Bogart
Keanan Brand
Grace Bridges
Canadianladybug
Melissa Carswell
Valerie Comer
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Janey DeMeo
Jeff Draper
Emmalyn Edwards
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Beth Goddard
Todd Michael Greene
Heather R. Hunt
Becky Jesse
Cris Jesse
Julie
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Dawn King
Mike Lynch
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirtika
Eve Nielsen
Nissa
Steve Rice
Crista Richey
James Somers
Speculative Faith
Stephanie
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Elizabeth Williams

The Sims 3

This post has been a long time coming. While I know no one has been waiting for this with bated breath, here it is: my review of The Sims 3.

I actually bought this game back when it came out, in the beginning of June. Various computer issues, now apparently resolved, kept me from giving this a good once over. But the past week or so, I've been able to dive in-depth into the game and I can form a pretty good opinion of it. To put it bluntly, I'm hooked.

I've been a fan of the Sims franchise since the original. There have been some hits and plenty of misses as they expanded the original game. But for the most part, they've made forward progress. For example, in the original Sims game, your Sims didn't age. Not really. They remained largely static. In The Sims 2, your Sims could age and eventually die. And with the expansion packs, they could also go to college, own their own business, have hobbies, pets, and eventually, enjoy the seasons. But when you played one family, the others froze in time. They could come over to visit, but as a result, you could get weird situations like children being older than their parents.

No more. With The Sims 3, the entire town ages at the same rate. You can only play one family at a time, same as always, but the other families age and progress without you. It's a great addition. Now the town seems much more vibrant.


This can lead to some weird situations. For example, in one game, I created a woman for one of my Sims to eventually marry. I moved her into a vacant house and left her there for about a week or two (game time, obviously). When they finally did get married, much to my surprise, she moved in with a baby. I didn't give her a baby when I created her. But there he was.

Speaking of the creation process, it's a lot more versatile. You can create just about anybody with any body type. The level of detail is absolutely astounding. The other interesting change is the inclusion of personality traits. There are dozens of them and over a Sim's life, you can pop in five. Most give benefits. Some don't.



While all of this is well and good, there are some minor issues that make me a bit upset. For one thing, there's no way to easily tell the difference between "young adults" and "adults." This may not seem all that important, but when you've got a nice young adult lady looking for a life-long relationship, you want to find someone close to her age, not an adult about to transition into his elder years. If anyone knows of an easy way to figure this out, please, let me know.


But what's annoying are the little glitches. Little bugs that, in my not so humble opinion, should have been squashed before the game shipped.

Let me give you three examples: the first game I played, my Sim was going to get married. He threw a party while his maid was there cleaning. He and his blushing bride wound up getting married in a back bedroom of his house. The maid wound up standing in the door of the room, clapping and cheering. And she wouldn't stop. Or move. The happy couple and half their guests wound up trapped by the immobile cheering maid, so long that the groom soiled himself in front of everyone.

But the horror didn't end there. I couldn't get rid of her. I finally had to knock a hole in the wall to let everyone out. And I couldn't fix it because the maid was there. I tried dismissing her. I tried firing her. Nothing doing. She was bound and determined to remain in that doorway, cheering and clapping. I thought maybe she'd starve to death. Nope, not Terminator-Maid. I finally had to move my couple out, thinking that maybe the house would reset itself. Nothing doing. Any family that moved in would find their new home equipped with a cheering, clapping maid. I wound up deleting that game.

Second weird quirk: in my current game, I have a young woman who likes to go fishing. So I had her fish whenever she could to improve her skill. Strange thing is, for about three days, her skill kept improving even when she wasn't fishing. Even when she slept, it just kept growing. She gained two whole skill points that way.

The most disturbing glitch I've seen multiple times is what I like to call the elastic baby syndrome. You take a toddler, set him or her behind a chair, and then turn on a TV on the other side. They will start watching the TV and, occasionally, their torso (and arms) will stretch so they can see the TV. It scared the bejeezus out of me the first time it happened.


Those are admittedly minor problems and they haven't kept me from enjoying this game. And I really mean it. Let me put it to you this way: I'm seriously considering selling all of my Sims 2 games and expansion packs. I have this feeling I won't be going back.

CSFF Blog Tour: The Enclave Day Two

So here we go, gripe #1 about The Enclave by Karen Hancock. But before I dig into it, allow me to post the following:
So if you want to keep the ending of the book a secret, you'd better stop reading now.

Like I said yesterday, part of the plot centers around a set of ancient sarcophagi. Director Swain, the head of the Kendall-Jakes Institute, believes that these large pods hold the secret to immortality. Of course, that's not what the pods contain. Instead ... are you ready for it? ... they contain sleeping Nephilim, the boogie men of Genesis 6. I suspected that's where the story was going, but when I got to where this is revealed for sure, I rolled my eyes and said, "Not again."

To be frank, I'm getting sick of the Nephilim. It seems like Christian speculative fiction always comes back to the Fallen Ones of the antedeluvian world. Quite frankly, I'm getting sick of it. I can think of at least three books that center around the Nephilim and both of them were lousy. The Enclave wasn't as bad as them, but I'm not letting it off the hook.

Part of the reason why I have such problems with the Nephilim is because I disagree with their traditional origin story. Most people believe that they're the product of angelic and human sexual unions. The proof text that gets trotted out for that is Genesis 6:2 and then the proponents for this view trot out a bunch of pseudopigraphical texts from intertestamental times, none of which are considered canonical (although I did see some convoluted logical gymnastics once to bootstrap one of these books; it failed to persuade).

What it comes down to for me is that Genesis 6 in no way says that the Nephilim are the children of the sons of God mating with the daughters of men. I don't even think that "sons of God" in this case does refer to angels. My personal read on this story is that the descendants of Seth (the "sons of God") interbred with the descendants of Cain (the "daughters of men"). If you look at the genealogical information in Genesis 4 & 5, we see the family trees of both Cain and Seth. In Cain's tree, the seventh generation is Lamech, the guy who boasts to his two wives that he killed a man for looking at him funny (that's a loose paraphrase). In Seth's family tree, the seventh generation is Enoch, the righteous man who walked with God and was no more because the Lord took him. As the old cliche goes, "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree." Seth's descendants were more upright than Cain's. The union of the two branches of humanity resulted in the bad dragging down the good.

My other major problem with the portrayal of the Nephilim in The Enclave is how fantastical they are. They have laser beam eyes, they can set off electromagnetic pulses. And Hancock at one point details how there were three castes of Nephilim. I don't remember what they were at this point, but I do remember scratching my head and wondering, "Where did she come up with that?" I'm all for dancing on the end of tree branches when it comes to speculative fiction. Some of this book was too much of a flying leap for me.

So what did you think? Are the Nephilim a dead horse that we should stop whipping? Or am I just letting my theological convictions get in the way?

And if you don't feel like telling me off, you can submit your name for the drawing. Even those of you who entered yesterday, feel free to enter again.

Go check out what the other tourists have to say:

Brandon Barr
Jennifer Bogart
Keanan Brand
Grace Bridges
Canadianladybug
Melissa Carswell
Valerie Comer
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Janey DeMeo
Jeff Draper
Emmalyn Edwards
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Beth Goddard
Todd Michael Greene
Heather R. Hunt
Becky Jesse
Cris Jesse
Julie
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Dawn King
Mike Lynch
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirtika
Eve Nielsen
Nissa
Steve Rice
Crista Richey
James Somers
Speculative Faith
Stephanie
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Elizabeth Williams

Healing Grace

I saw the ending coming. But that's only because I got to read this one before it was published. Insert big cheesy grin here.

No, seriously, it was my pleasure to read Lisa J. Lickel's book, Healing Grace. Lisa is one of my fantabulous critique partners and I got to read the end of this one when we first met. So for me, it was interesting to see how the book started.

It's the story of Grace Runyon. Grace is from a small town in Tennessee, a Christian community where gifts of the Spirit are alive and well. Grace has the gift of healing. Or at least, she did. But then tragedy up-ends her life in a major way and she runs as far as she can, all the way to the town of East Bay, Michigan. There she tries to recover from her loss.

Only to find herself on the verge of a new one. The house she buys belonged to a single father named Ted Marshall. Ted is battling serious health problems that will likely prove to be fatal. Even though Grace is still suffering from the traumatic scars of her previous life, she finds herself falling in love with Ted. That's a problem, because it seems as if God and her gift have abandoned her. What can she do when she's falling in love with a man that she could have healed but can't anymore?

Lisa's book was great. You really feel for Grace as she tries to cope with her loss and tries to construct a new life for herself. It isn't as easy as it sounds, especially since there are undercurrents in East Bay that threaten to take her down. Lisa especially weaves together some great mental images with her words, conjuring up the area around East Bay and making it live. And Eddy Marshall, Ted's son, has to be the most precocious fictional kid I've met in a long time.

So go and check this one out for yourself. You won't be disappointed!

CSFF Blog Tour: The Enclave Day One

This month we're taking a look at The Enclave by Karen Hancock. I've loved Hancock's books in the past. The Legends of the Guardian King were fantastic and are high on my list of "books I gotta reread sometime soon." Problem is, new books keep hopping onto my "books I gotta read for the first time" list. Maybe sometime three years from now...

Anyway, on to the book at hand. The story revolved around Lacey McHenry, a new employee at the Kendall-Jakes Longevity Institute. She's the "frog girl," working in the labs caring for the experimental animals. But then she's attacked by a strange boy. She's saved by Dr. Cameron Reinhardt, one of the geneticists on staff. He patches her up and makes sure she stays safe.

But then the higher-ups at Kendall-Jakes cover up the attack. They suggest that Lacey's attack was really a psychological episode brought on by stress. All is not well for Cameron either. He's approached by someone from his past with a special mission for him. Soon Lacey and Cameron are trapped in the middle of a major conspiracy, one that revolves around ancient sarcophagi, strange enclaves, and the head of the labs, the egotistical Director Swain.

Hancock's writing is exciting and gripping. The first chapter grabs you and draws you into the story. There's plenty to enjoy as the tale unfolds.

But as much as I looked forward to reading this book, there was a lot that bothered me about this story as a whole. Two and a half big things in particular. I'll start with the half-a-thing today and cover the two other big things over the next two days.

The half-a-thing is this: predictability. One of the strange things about the story is that of the New Eden Enclave. After a few chapters, we seemingly jump into the future, to an ark-like building that contains survivors of some sort of apocalyptic disaster. That threw me off for a moment or two, but within a few pages, I had it figured out. So when the "big reveal" happened, my response was "Well, duh."

It's not a big thing. I still enjoyed the book for the most part, but like I said, there are two major things that bothered me about this story. I'll discuss them both in greater depth over the next two days.

But wait! I almost forgot (shame on me!). If you want to judge this book for yourself, I have a copy to give away! That's right, you too can check out this book and see what you think. All you have to do is leave a comment on any of this month's blog tour posts (today's, tomorrow's, and Wednesday's) with your e-mail address to enter the drawing. Disguise your e-mail address with spaces and words (like using [at] or [dot] or something like that) so spammers can't get you. On Thursday, I'll put all the entries in a hat and someone will draw out the winning name. Maybe my son. If I can get him to pick only one. So enter now, enter often. Post a comment once a day if you're interested.

While we wait for tomorrow, be sure to check out what the other tourists have to say:

Brandon Barr
Jennifer Bogart
Keanan Brand
Grace Bridges
Canadianladybug
Melissa Carswell
Valerie Comer
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Janey DeMeo
Jeff Draper
Emmalyn Edwards
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Beth Goddard
Todd Michael Greene
Heather R. Hunt
Becky Jesse
Cris Jesse
Julie
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Dawn King
Mike Lynch
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirtika
Eve Nielsen
Nissa
Steve Rice
Crista Richey
James Somers
Speculative Faith
Stephanie
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Elizabeth Williams

Zombie Defense Plan

I'm beginning to worry that I may be warping Isaiah a bit too much.

Tonight Jill made chicken pot pie for supper and she decided we were going to try to get Isaiah to eat it. That can be something of a challenge at times, because if he decides he doesn't want to try something, there's very little you can do to persuade him otherwise. But we were going to try to do it anyway, so Jill gave him a slice but also gave him grapes and Texas toast (both things we know he'll eat) just in case.

And sure enough, Isaiah wouldn't even look at the pie. He kept cramming his face with toast. So Jill scooped up a carrot.

"You like carrots, right? This is just a piece of carrot!"

Well, Isaiah does like carrots and so he tried the little piece. He got his "I'm not sure about this" face so we resorted to our usual playacting. "Yum! Isn't that good?"

It worked. He was willing to eat more carrots so long as it was only carrots.

But then a piece of corn got stuck to a carrot and Isaiah insisted that it be removed. Rather than do so, I opened my big mouth.

"That's just corn. You know, like what gets thrown at the zombies?"

Some of you may be raising eyebrows right now. About a month and a half ago, I purchased the game "Plants vs. Zombies" and Isaiah has watched me play it. One of the plants you use to stem a zombie invasion of your house is a "kernelpult" that tosses tiny kernels of corn and pats of butter at the zombies. Isaiah knows this offensive plant. He always points it out when I plant one. So I figured making that connection would be helpful.

It actually worked. He devoured that bite and was willing to eat more corn.

So I decided to press my luck. "You need to keep eating your veggies so you can be big and strong and fight off the zombies."

Do you see how this might not end well for us?

Actually, it wasn't so bad. At one point, Isaiah was worried that the zombies were coming. Not scared really. He just stopped and said, "If you don't eat this, the zombies will come." We assured him that Daddy had eaten his pie and that he could fight off the zombies with Isaiah.

Then Isaiah said, "If you eat your toast, the zombies will get a truck." I have no explanation for that.

So I guess Isaiah is our zombie defense plan because he did eat all of his chicken pot pie and we celebrated that the zombies were not coming.

The things you do when you're a parent. No, scratch that. The things you do when you're a weird parent.

W-------- Wednesday

... what was that? I was supposed to do what this week? Writing?

Oh shoot. I knew I forgot something.

I have no excuse. I can't even claim that I need a break or anything. It just didn't happen.

Well, that's not entirely true. I have been doing some writing, just in a different medium. I've been using the Spore Galactic Adventures game and writing adventures for my fellow players. Just made one tonight called "Clark and Stanley tend bar." I'd explain but it'd probably take too long. Suffice to say I'm on a bandwagon with that one.

I'll have to do better this week. I think part of my problem is focus. I know that in two weeks, I'll be pulling Numb off the shelf to see how bad the damage really is. I wasn't sure what to do in the meantime. But after giving it some thought, the best thing is to probably go back to The Escape. I've got some ideas how to jazz it up a little. We'll have to see how it works.

Or I'll just wind up making more Clark and Stanley adventures.

Homeward Bound

Maybe the problem here is that I read the last book first.

I'm normally a fan of Harry Turtledove. He produces some great counterfactual history stories and I've read some great short stories of his as well. But in spite of his sterling reputation with me, Homeward Bound fell short for me, and I say that with a great deal of irony.

Like I said, this is the last book in a series, one with the following premise: what if aliens invaded during the height of World War II? One minute, the Axis and Allies are at each others' throats. The next, they have to cooperate to repel the invaders. They are a bunch of lizards who call themselves the Race. Human beings have to fight tooth and nail to survive and, eventually, they begin to adapt. They steal loads of technology from the Race, advancing in leaps and bounds.

Homeward Bound picks up toward the end of the twentieth century. Things have stabilized on Earth and so the United States casts its gaze outward toward Home, the Race's homeworld. They've been tinkering with cold sleep, the suspended animation the Race uses to traverse the distance between stars. And so now, the U.S. is ready to send a delegation to the Race to try to hammer out a mutual peace.

It's not an easy task. Sam Yeager, a man seen as a traitor by most of the U.S., is sent (mostly to get him out of the way on Earth). So are his son and daughter-in-law. An assortment of other people are sent hurtling through space. Theirs is no easy challenge. They have to overcome the deeply entrenched pride and prejudice of the Race to convince them that they are equals. This becomes incredibly difficult when messages from Earth reach Home, hinting that the balance of power is about to shift dramatically.

This could have been a great book. I love the way that Turtledove described the Race. They were definitely alien beings. I also liked the way he portrayed the human race after living with the Race for half a century.

But this book really didn't do much of anything for me. For starters, it was too repetitious. Turtledove described people going into cold sleep at least half a dozen times, using very similar language. And then he described the same half dozen coming out of cold sleep, utilizing the same jokes. Then, when the humans are on Home, we see the same scene at least three times. And when the balance-tipping point comes, we see the same argument several times. Quite honestly, I think that Turtledove could have cut out all the repeating information. He could have easily saved us at least a hundred pages (maybe more) if he had.

The other major problem is that there were so many missed opportunities in the book. It never really went anywhere. Moments when the mission could have been put in mortal danger were glossed over or winked at. The balance-tipping point is hinted at so strongly I knew what was going to happen at least a hundred pages before it did. And the ending sort of fizzled (thanks to even more repetitious scenes!).

Maybe the problem is that I haven't read the other eight or ten books that came before this one. As a result, I had no clue who most of the characters were and had a hard time mustering any sympathy for them. Well, that's not entirely true. I could sympathize with them. But I kept wanting them to do something interesting. Instead, they mostly just sat around and talked.

So don't bother with this one unless you've read the others in the series. As for me, I don't think I'll be revisiting the Race any time soon.

"Wordcount" Wednesday

I don't really have a word count to report this week. As I said a week and a half ago, I finished Numb. This week I spent about half an hour printing the manuscript out and it's now going on the shelf for about a month or two so I can get some emotional distance. Right now, I think it's a pile of garbage (it's a first draft, after all), but my opinion might change.

So what have I been up to writing wise the past two weeks? Not too much. My side of the family went to a cabin up at Leech Lake in northern Minnesota for a week. Great name, right? It was a lot of fun. Finished reading a book, played lots of Wii games my brother and his wife thoughtfully brought, and hung out with the kids a lot. For example, I had the great privilege of helping my son cross the mighty Mississippi on foot. Well, at the headwaters, anyway.


But I did get to read through The Escape, my NaNoWriMo project from this past November.


The crazy thing is, I remember thinking that this was the biggest pile of garbage I'd ever written. Now I think there are some good parts. The ending, in particular, works quite well.



There are soft spots that need fixing, though. The characterization of my main character needs some work so she can show some growth by the end. I also have some key concepts that need to be introduced better. And I think I have some notes somewhere around here from when I wrote this thing.

It looks like July will be spent in rewriting land. First comes The Escape. I have to somehow synthesize some of the ideas I've got knocking around in my head and gel them all together. After that, I might take another crack at Return of the Mourning Dove, a secular fantasy I wrote a year or two ago. One of my fabulous critique partners sent me back a manuscript's worth of notes and I haven't had the chance to sift through them all yet. And by the time I'm done with all that, it might be time to take a run at Numb again and see what I can do with that.

What has me a little worried right now is that I don't have any new ideas to work on. I've actually been looking at brainstorming books in Barnes and Noble to see if they might have anything that could help. We'll have to wait and see.