Thursday, December 20, 2012

If We Survive Andrew Klavan



As a long time fan of Andrew Klavan's YA offerings I snapped at the chance to read If We Survive,  a jungle survival tale with a coming of age twist. The book definitely lived up to it's adventurous and leafy cover and left me with a fingering of something deeper behind.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Soul's Gate James Rubart


Having read several of Rubart's other novels(Book of Days and Rooms) and been impressed with his characters and imaginative settings I immediately jumped at the chance to review his latest book Soul's Gate.

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Dreamlander by K.M Weiland

DreamlanderDreamlander by K.M. Weiland
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Dreamlander is a masterpiece in the fantasy speculative fiction genre.

With precise strokes Ms. Weiland paints a vibrant world in the vein of stories such as Black by Ted Dekker; a dreamer living in two worlds, at once, faced with mayhem and havoc in both. This is Weiland's first excursion into fantasy, a change from her two previously published historical fiction books, and she has hit the proverbial nail on the head.

As an admittedly cynical fantasy reader I was impressed to see the neatly avoided fantasy pitfalls of formulaic worldbuilding: ancient elves, darkly muttered spells, and the ever popular unicorn, troll or fairy. Instead, Dreamlander offers an immersive world with it's own natural and believable history and culture; her unique sideline characters Pitch and Raz, are one of the best the best supporting duo I have read.

The scenery description was done tastefully, properly setting the scene without stopping the flow of the story.
And last but not least, the emotion of the story. Inside its binding, Dreamlander contains a heart wrenching plot line of failure, hope, and sacrifice. Not content to settle for a dash of emotion to pull the story along, Weiland pulls back the curtain on the quagmire of the human heart. Readers intimately share the heartaches and fears the characters face, as well as rejoice with their triumphs and applaud selfless sacrifice. Because of this, Dreamlander becomes something bigger than itself.

I finish Dreamlander better for having read it and urge you to try it for yourself.





Right now Dreamlander is only ninety-nine cents on Amazon and I highly recommend buying it.

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Done with "I will pray for you"



No need to call my parents, I'm not giving up on prayer and Christianity or prayers from other saints. But I am giving up on a proverbial thorn in the side in Christian conversation; that oft heard statement of Christians: I will pray for you. Perhaps you've even uttered it yourself? I know I have.


Wednesday, May 2, 2012

7 Hours Anthology

After close to a month of  waiting with baited breath I was thrilled to finally receive my 7 Hours Anthology omnibus.  With stories from mostly well known Christian authors: Michael Dellosso, Rene Gutteridge, Travis Thrasher, Tom Pawlik, Veronica Kendig, James Andrew Wilson, and Robin Parrish, I was eager to start reading and discover what awaited me!

Overall my opinion is positive of 7 Hours; corners were not cut on the writing and fiction editing of the omnibus, nor did the stories seem underdeveloped or out of place in the overall scheme of things. Also, and very importantly, Thomas Constant was fantastically "constant" throughout each piece.

As I said, my opinion is relatively positive of the omnibus as a whole, but not everything was roses. I found that reading story after story which, without exception, had people dying at the end was slightly  morbid and a bit redundant. Had I split the reading up over the course of a week instead of finishing most of the anthology in a day, this may have not been an issue.
I was surprised to see that all the characters had some change of heart and profession of faith before their seven hours were up; I'm not sure this was the best route to take in each story, I found myself being distracted by it as it appeared in every story. Perhaps this was a requirement in the writing?

My last negative I must mention is the formatting: I was not impressed with the job done. The first few stories' formatting was fine, the last few were slipshod. Repeatedly scene breaks weren't even separated by a header or multiple line breaks. This detracted from the reading, the stories themselves, and my feel on the omnibus overall. There is no reason for sloppy formatting on an anthology designed for Kindle.

In conclusion, the stories were creative, well written, but slightly redundant as well as being dogged by formatting errors as the anthology wound down.

I received this book as a free review copy from Tyndale Publishing and was not required to write a positive review.

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Raised Right Alisa Harris

Raised Right by Alisa Harris is yet another non-fiction post-Christianese disillusionment book. Written with only a touch of sarcasm it chronicles the journey of Ms. Harris from a politically spearheded religious focus as a child to a slightly jaded adult.

Crazy Dangerous Andrew Klavan



Crazy Dangerous by Andrew Klavan was a reading joy. It housed excellent characters, a twisting and twirling plot, as well as a encouraging worldview.(Fac Recte Nil Time)

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Proponent of Chivalry Driven Euthanasia?

Art by Edward Blair Leighton(Thanks for the FYI Michelle!)

You may or may not have seen this photo before. I have personally seen it on Facebook many times over the last few months and been frustrated at the lack of protest from believers. The photo promotes a not so subtle ideology that is wrong and completely unchristian. Completely.  Last night laying in bed, I was stirred to write a response, here it is. I'll show you where it goes wrong and how.  

I'm not going to protest chivalry and attack the idea of laying down our lives for others; the key word there is others not women. But I'm not going to defend it either, and get bogged down in chivalrous dribble that leaves girls sighing and waiting for that knight in shining armor to rescue them and right the world, or leaves guys looking around every corner for a beautiful and helpless girl to rescue.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

The Hunger Games~A partial review

I've be desperate for fiction lately, and I mean really desperate. For several months I've toyed with reading The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Yesterday I put in my Ebookfling.com loan request, today I received the book!

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Scriptural Prayers

To be frank with you, sometimes I really don't know how to pray and what to pray. Sometimes it feels like anything I have to say is either not coming boldly enough before the throne or coming brashly.  I have to wonder if other believers sometimes face the same predicament.
Something that really helped me was using New Testament prayers; around six months ago, in the course of several nights, I nabbed pretty much every prayer in the epistles and sticky-noted them. So nowwhen I want to pray for my siblings, parents, friends, etc. I can flip through the sticky notes and pray my way through. It was a perfect fit for me.

In the last two days I felt compelled to make a PDF version(It turned into two) of my prayer sticky notes. I left the references with the prayers as well as breaking them down into two different formats: Prayers by Scripture section, and Individual Requests.

If you've ever wondered what to pray for me, or what I'd like pray for, please, pray these lists for me. Then tell me, please! It will make my day.




Sunday, January 15, 2012

The slow down



Hey there folks,

So as you've probably guessed, I haven't completed the seven sermon challenge. Here's the jist of what happened: When I tried to listen my brain refused :(; at that point, life got busier and more gaming happened.

Also, after the required three day break, I started a new antibiotic, or rather, antibiotics. Today was the third day on Clindamycin, the first antibiotic of the four. Since it was the third day I took three. Fear not! On day ten I won't be taking ten ;) I cap my dosage at three.


So that's what's going on with me, in a nutshell. What about you?

Books read recently:
Lion of Babylon Davis Bunn
Kiloton Threat William Boykin
Deadman's Switch Timothy Zahn
The Awakening Cliff Warden
Unbroken Laura Hillenbrand

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Sermon days #5 and #6!



Even though I didn't get a post up for sermon day #5, indeed I did it! In fact, on day #5(Yesterday) I started an eight part series walking through Galatians.

Monday, January 9, 2012

Sermon day #4!

 I just finished listening to Desperate Prayer~David Platt. It was a God ordained message to hear; it was an emotional message to hear. There were two separate times in the message just for prayer and worship. For this man who's theology is always outrunning his emotional connection it was good; for this man who's been praying to be made for Christlike it was timely.

The sermon piqued one main question in my mind, and it's one that's probably going to take some mulling; and that's ok.


I trust the message will speak to you as well,
Millard

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Friday, January 6, 2012

Sermon day #2!

It's 10:20 PM and I just finished my message for the day.



Fasting that changes the world~David Platt

Sure glad I buckled down and got the second half done, this evening, though! The message was far reaching but a majority of it was focused on Paul and Barnabas' journey from Antioch and worked through their journey and pointed out specific prayer focuses we can use praying for any of our brothers and sisters around the world. Some of the references might not make sense to you...but they did in my mind when I jotted them down ;)