This month, the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy tour is taking a look at Terri Main’s ezine, the Wayfarer’s Journal.
Fellow members of the Lost Genre Guild, thus far we’ve managed to get along fairly well for an ultraconservative fundamentalist and a “left-leaning” (as the media always puts it) Christian, though not mainline unless you count the Assemblies of God as mainline. I suppose we have this much in common: we both know what “speaking in tongues” is, and we both like a good speculative novel.
Though, as writers, our audience callings are miles apart: Terri’s more evangelistic and I’m more prophetic. The evangelistic focus being on the lost and the prophetic focus, or discipleship as it’s more frequently called, on calling those who’ve already found Him to repentance. Naturally, we both see a need for more of our own type rather than the other, because that’s the way callings function.
When I visited he
This month, the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy blog tour is for The Restorer by Sharon Hinck.
Susan Mitchell, frazzled stay at home mom of four, retreats up to the sanctuary her husband built for her in the attic and reads about Deborah, a Judge (leader) of ancient Israel, but is interrupted by strange noises. She investigates, accidentally activates a hidden portal to a world uniquely Hink’s, and finds herself in a land that desperately needs her to be their Deborah.
Now, there is a logical reason for there to be a portal to another dimension in her attic, but I can’t share it without revealing one of numerous plot twists. Nor does that tidy plot summary really do the book justice. Per the cover blurb, Hinck indeed zigs where most readers would expect a zag.
Honestly, I was quite impressed with this one. Clean style, with sparse few mechanical kinks, and an awesome heroine.
I absolutely loved Susan, precisely because she isn’t the typical headstrong spitfi
Christian Fantasy. What comes to mind? For many, the first word to pop up is, “Contradiction.” If you’re sold on Fantasy as a genre being wicked prima facie, the forth novel in Karen Hancock’s Legends of the Guardian-King, Return of the Guardian-King, probably won’t be able to persuade you otherwise, even if the publisher has classified the genre as “Allegory.”
And it is, but if you’re in this group, you’ll still take issue. Whether you insist his name is Yahweh or Jehovah, it will bother you, as has me, that she changed God’s name to “Eidon” that this is Greek for “I saw” will not improve matters. Hancock could sit down and write out an explanation detailing every Christian allegory in the book, and even if her arguments for the validity of her chosen symbols were so compelling, you could think of no response to them, you would come back with an attack accusing her, in so many words, of blasphemy for setting an allegory in the tradition of Pilgrim’s Progr
I finished reading Double Vision yesterday (see my earlier review), and author Randall Ingermanson continued to wow and raise the bar on craftsmanship in it’s genre, although my reading materials of late have shown I take honesty about as seriously as Dillon, who I found it easy to identify with, except for politics, and especially on bathing suits. I think some ladies will be surprised by Dillon’s reaction as he would have been dismayed to learn today’s young women have been trained by culture to intentionally flaunt their assets and literally dress to kill.
On the science, if you can make it through the initial explanations early on, the sailing will get much smoother later on. He’s got this aspect about as air tight as one could expect, given God’s sovereign omnipotence (translation: there is nothing He can’t do with the caveat that He also won’t contradict His own character and will) makes the theory the universe splits in two every time we
This month, I’m getting to participate (although somewhat late thanks to Pres. George Washington having another birthday) in CSFF’s blog tour. On Deck we have Jeff Gerke’s Wherethemapends.com
First, if you don’t like gateway pages, you’ll want to enter the site at the main page.
What else I noticed about, or on, this site, in order:
1) Killer graphics (one of which you’ll miss if you skip the gateway page). That alone is reason enough to take a peek. I’d love to copy some over for you, but none were provided with the tour, so you’ll have to visit to understand. The best part? Not only does this site have a design destined to visually delight fans of speculative fiction, it manages at the same time to look professional and tastefully done, this is not “visual overload” graphics, but a good clean design, and fastloading, too (on DSL).
2) The newsletter sign up box has been wisely placed in the upper right of the page, but also
