Radical Together, David Platt

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The Map Across Time

The Map Across Time by C.S. Lakin: This is the second book in the Gates of Heaven Series, however even without reading the first book I didn’t feel I was at a disadvantage reading this one.

The story encompasses a magic map that take you through time, the pure love of two siblings that binds them together through adversity, and an ailing kingdom with a curse upon it. The characters were believable and driven plausibly by their own motives toward a personal agenda. The plot was pleasantly fresh with its own small twists and turns, however several points in the book could be guessed well ahead of time due to a medium level of predictability. The predictability didn’t damage the book in my eyes, that was simply how it was.  Lakin did a good job keeping the plot moving to the 3/4s mark of the book giving us just about the right amount of action and plot to keep the story going. However, I found that once myself as a reader got to where it felt like the end of the book should come, it wouldn’t. Instead she prolonged the wrapping up of the story in a massive time travel chain and(I feel like) forced the ending. I believe she tried to connect too many loose ends in the last forty pages and instead of a mosaic, left us with a knot. This, in my opinion, was the greatest error of the book: The story ran its route well, it wanted to end; Lakin didn’t.

The book is mainly marketed as a fairy tale, but besides a talking pig, I thought it fit just as well into the fantasy genre; albeit strange fantasy, but fantasy just the same.

I’d give this book a 3/5 stars, if the book had ended 50 pages sooner it easily earns a 4/5.

I received this book  from AMG publishers and the views I expressed are  my own.


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Promises for the American Patriot

God’s promises for the American Patriot:

When I picked up this book I was looking forward to: the timely usage of scriptures in conjunction with patriotism, interesting anecdotes about patriotism, and stories from patriots both young and old. Upon reading God’s promises for the American patriot I was able to find all these things in the book, as well as something I hadn’t considered. The book contained not just quotes and stories from our founding fathers, as well as more modern examples of patriotism, but it contained and provided excerpts from some of America’s most famous legal documents.

However, something I did not expect is that it would be a “thought-a-day” book; every other page containing a small written piece utilizing excerpts or perhaps a mini-biography of a patriot with scriptures on the opposing page. For the first fifty pages, I enjoyed the stories, informative pieces, as well as quotes from our legal documents. Unfortunately, after fifty pages I found it becoming rote. Perhaps due to the subject matter covered, there simply wasn’t much possible fluctuation in the material presented. I found the book lacked holding power for me to read, and regret I wasn’t aware it was a thought-a-day book.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze®.com <http://BookSneeze®.com> book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 <http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html> : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

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