Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Wrap-up and more Angels - Eye of the Sword - CSFF Blog Tour

I'll admit, I was expecting people to take issue with my view of Henley's portrayal of angels, but I was surprised by the comments nonetheless.  They were good and gave me a lot to think about, but I found it weird that people seemed to find it interesting or unique that I would view angels as angels! :)

Several other folks on the tour agreed with at least some of my concerns with Eye of the Sword.

Chawna Schroeder's concerns about the content seem to run even deeper than mine. Shannon McDermott, who I believe I cited last month for her excellent writeup of Beckon, mirrored almost all my concerns about the portrayal of God (and in her review of Breath of Angel she again mentioned almost everything I'd mentioned!). I'm starting to think I may want to look at her reviews the next time I want to find a book to read. Janeen Ippolito noted her concern of Christian teens confusing the "angels" with real angels (a threat I actually think is a bit more worrisome than Christian teens becoming overly interested in vampires or werewolves) and Anna Mittower also expresses concerns regarding angels. Even Rebecca Luella Miller, who was able to separate the angels from the ones of our world, notes some concerns about the absence of God. Like me, Faye Orgard would not call the book "Christian."

On the other hand, Shane Werlinger and Keanan Brand both saw Biblical parallels in a climactic scene fairly early in the book. (Though I adore Jeff Chapman's calculating logic regarding that same scene! I could've sworn someone else said something similar but I looked through every blog and couldn't find it...if it was you, please post so I can edit it in here!)

This week I've been thinking a lot about angels in the media and wanted to share two other portrayals of angels in the media.

A certain Matt Damon movie (don't click if you don't want spoiled) has what can certainly be interpreted as angels. I kind of liked that film because it wasn't a Christian film (if it had been portrayed as such, I would've been annoyed) and it brought up a lot of really interesting ideas. Not saying the portrayal was closer to the truth than Eye of the Sword's (it probably wasn't) but it was a conversation-starter.

The other is a book I read once, years ago, Many Waters by Madeline L'Engle. I started re-reading it Monday night in hopes maybe I could get through and do a review for today, but I saw that wasn't going to happen. Let me just quote the first description of an angel in that book:
Then came a vivid flash of light, similar to that of the unicorn's horn, and a tall presence stood in the tent, smiling at the old man, then looking quietly at Sandy. The personage had skin the same glowing apricot color as Yalith's. Hair the color of wheat with the sun on it, brightly gold, long, and tied back, falling so that it almost concealed tightly furled wings, the light-filled gold of the hair. The eyes were an incredibly bright blue, like the sea with sunlight touching the waves.

Lamech greeted him respectfully. "Adnarel, we thank you." Then he said to Sandy, "The seraph will be able to help you. Seraphim know much about healing."

So this was a seraph. Tall, even taller than the twins. But the only resemblance was in height. Otherwise, it was totally different, beautiful, but alien. The seraph turned to Lamech. "What have we here?"

--Many Waters by Madeline L'Engle
Not saying that description (or book) is perfect. And OK, the cover is rather creepy. But I feel like the description shows at least a hint of the majesty and mystery of angels, which is what I'd like to see in more Christian portrayals.

EDITED 12/16/12:

In fairness, I re-read Many Waters a few months back. The angels all have the ability to shift into an animal, which is shown repeatedly. There is outright questioning of God--including one of the main "good" characters outright calling God a sexist, among other things. So, there are numerous worrisome aspects in "Many Waters" as well, and not just because it's in effect Biblical fanfiction. I guess the differences in my perception came from both where I was in my life when I first read "Many Waters" (a lot less well-versed in my faith) and also expectations of a secular book versus a Christian one.

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Review: Eye of the Sword by Karyn Henley (CSFF Blog Tour)

Julie again, writing as part of the CSFF Blog Tour. I have a review system you may (or may not) want to look at to see HOW I come up with my ratings and what I rate on, to try to be fair.

Book: Eye of the Sword by Karyn Henley  (blog, Facebook)

Ridiculously simplified summary: 2nd in a series. A falsely-accused knight must prove his worth to his king, keep the love of his princess, save the kingdom from those who would destroy it, and find the harps that will restore the stairway to heaven, which will allow human-like angels, and departed human souls, to ascend.

Content: Now I know how ultra-conservative Christians must have felt when C.S. Lewis's Narnia series came out. (Talking beasts? Jesus is a lion? Gods? Children drinking wine????) Now, as I mentioned yesterday, I have no problem with Narnia, but the content of this book concerned me.

I did not read the first book in the series, Breath of Angel, so there may have been explanations there that someone who only read the second book missed.

Yesterday, I wrote at length about Henley's portrayal of angels so I won't go over that here.

Again, Henley is quite credentialed in the Christian market, so it could be I'm the one who's wrong. That said, this is marketed as a young adult book, but angels aside, there is a lot of content that I know my mother would not have wanted me reading as a teen.

The point-of-view character, Trevin, consistently senses the color of certain people's auras, an idea I've only heard linked to the New Age movement. He has a dark past--did he seek forgiveness from God in Book 1?  In this one, he just has to learn to forgive himself. As an angel advises him, "The harshest judgments are often the ones we place on ourselves." That advice sounded secular to me; I think forgiving yourself is useless if you don't remember that God forgave you (provided you accepted Christ's gift).

An angel refers to God as "the Most High, father-mother of the universe." (Not saying that can't possibly in any sense be an accurate description of God, but I didn't feel like an aside in a Young Adult Fantasy was the place to bring that up as if it's undisputed.)

Even more upsetting to me is that God seemed utterly absent. In fairness, that's a problem one of the angels mentions, but it just made this book feel bleak and Godless to me. The angels can't get to heaven because three harps need to be assembled to form the stairway to heaven, and this must happen when the stars or planets align (which happens once every 200 years). The souls of the dead are herded into some sort of underworld because they can't get to heaven.

As a Christian, a very major portion of my faith is that God will make everything right after death. If there were any doubt that He for some reason couldn't (!!!) get us to heaven, harps or no harps, I don't know where my faith would be.

Then again, I didn't notice anyone praying, or even thinking God could or would intervene. Even the angels seem to have very little to do with Him.

Henley's website describes many non-Christian religions' views of angels, harps, and even World Trees, though if you look around, you can find what she believes.  If I owned a bookstore, I wouldn't actually put this particular book in the Christian section.

Christian content is not officially incorporated into the numeric ratings, though obviously it does influence some of them.

Rating: 

Compelling: 8 out of 10. When you see a two-page list of characters at the start, you know things are going to get complicated. Since this is book 2 in a series, I had trouble with the early parts, when Henley is is referencing things I didn't understand, or trying to explain things that had happened. The large cast, complicated family trees, etc. are likely standard for epic fantasy. Once I got to the point where the protagonist Trevin is accused of a Very Big Crime, however, it started to flow nicely.

There is a romantic thread, but this not a romance per se.

Characters: 7 out of 10. Most of the characters seemed likable enough, and Trevin's point-of-view was strong throughout. There was no one I really loved, though; the closest was the prince. With so many characters, some blended together for me. Besides the prince and his jester, the one standout character of the ones introduced in this book was Ollena, the female warrior. (Do fantasy series have a quota of at least one female knight per series? Mine and Maggie's might come up in book 4....)

Writing/editing: 8 out of 10. I didn't notice any typos. Again, some of the exposition got to be confusing, though I'm not sure the problem could have been handled much more eloquently. A few of the characters have affectations that border on obnoxious (i.e. Ollena seeming to constantly end her sentences with "hmm" in some stretches) or oft-repeated descriptions (Ollena consistently smells like sandalwood...strangely, I don't remember what the love interest Melaia smells like). There was at least one instance where a somewhat important event involving the silver net was kind of slipped into the middle of a long action paragraph, so reading through, I missed the significance and had to go back to it later--not a big deal but I think the editor could've worked to make it clearer. Overall, though, well-written.

I thought the ending was handled very, very well.  It clearly indicates there's another book envisioned, yet it wraps up enough that I don't feel frustrated.

Plausibility/believability: 2 out of 5. I think I would have given this same rating had this not been a Christian book...I'd expect any book dealing with angels to at least have some serious reference to God, and preferably not have God sleeping/ignoring the world/otherwise incapacitated. If a non-Christian book showed angels getting married and/or having children with humans in a positive light, I'd be annoyed, too.

Positive: 2 out of 5. Relatively low body count and the book is about the right amount of "darkness" to be compelling but not disturb my sleep. I just had trouble with the portrayal of angels and the limitations on and absence of God.

Gut reaction: 2 out of 5. If not for the problems I had with the world portrayed, I think I would have really enjoyed this book. Henley's style is strong and she has some truly compelling storylines. This just wasn't the Christian book I anticipated.

Bonus points: 5 out of 5.

Total Rating: 3.4 out of 5 stars

Here are the other blog tour participants (late additions that weren't listed yesterday are in bold):

Thomas Fletcher Booher
Keanan Brand
Beckie Burnham
Jackie Castle
Brenda Castro
Jeff Chapman
Christine
Theresa Dunlap
Cynthia Dyer
Victor Gentile
Ryan Heart
Janeen Ippolito
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Emileigh Latham
Rebekah Loper
Shannon McDermott
Karen McSpadden
Meagan @ Blooming with Books
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Anna Mittower
Mirriam Neal
Nissa
Faye Oygard
Donita K. Paul
Nathan Reimer
Crista Richey
Chawna Schroeder
Kathleen Smith
Donna Swanson
Jessica Thomas
Steve Trower
Shane Werlinger
Phyllis Wheeler


*I received a copy of this book free from the publisher in exchange for this review.* 

Monday, August 20, 2012

Angels and Nephilim and other Biblical Beings in Fiction - CSFF Blog Tour

Julie here! This month, the CSFF Blog Tour is reviewing Karyn Henley's Eye of the Sword (blog, Facebook).

I'm not a fan of angels in fiction. In addition to the concern Henley expresses on her website about not wanting to go through God's middleman, I also notice the media tends to get angels wrong. No, I never thought that when a bell rings an angel gets its wings, but I was shocked in 7th or 8th grade to discover that no, angels are NOT actually dead people, but created beings.

There are a lot of things about angels in Eye of the Sword that I personally disagree with, despite Henley's extensive Christian work history. Full disclosure, I did not read the first book in the series, Breath of Angel, so it's possible some of these points were addressed there. However, in Eye of the Sword:
  • Humans and angels can have children, and the end result is Nephilim, who are neither giants nor bad. (See Genesis 6, where God is very angry, in close conjunction with the angels taking human women as wives. One explanation, though not the only one, is that God needed the flood to wipe out the half-breed Nephilim from the Earth.)
  • Female angels can bear children of human men.
  • Unless I read wrong, angels seem to be able to die as humans die.
  • Outside of heaven, angels seem to consistently look like humans (aside from wings they hide under a cape).
  • Many angels spend their time with humans, acting more or less like humans; I saw little evidence of them thinking about God and His affairs.
  • Angels can't get to heaven if their stairway is missing.
Some people will find no problem with these rules applying to angels. Others might argue that this is a fantasy world, so the Biblical portrayal of angels doesn't have to apply. For some reason, I have no problem when Christian fantasy portrays dragons (commonly portrayed as Satan in the Bible) and pegasii (Pegasus was a "god"). I think C.S. Lewis even redeemed dryads in Narnia. (Not so sure about Bacchus, though!)

But I personally can't view angels with the same flexibility I give dragons. Angels are absolutely real, Biblical beings, not figurative portrayals. They are involved in human affairs, and are second to God. Even if we speculate that God created countless worlds (and I love to speculate about that), would the angels themselves be so drastically different in those other words?

Even allowing that angels might be different in other worlds, Eye of the Sword takes place in a world where the term "comain" is used for people who seem to basically fulfill the function of knights.  I don't agree with everything Orson Scott Card has to say, but he (and I believe many others) argue that in fantasy, if you use a new term for an item, there should be a good reason for it. If someone's eating a fruit that looks a lot like an apple, and tastes a lot like an apple, and grows on trees that look like apple trees, and is made into pies that taste like apple pies, it's probably best to just call the fruit an apple.

So by that logic, I as reader assume that the so-called "angels" and "Nephilim" are supposed to be MORE similar to the real angels and Nephilim of our world, than the king-serving, sword-and-shield bearing, horse-riding "comains" are similar to the knights of old. And given that these angels and Nephilim do not at all match up to my expectations, I got alternately irritated and offended when reading about them.

Anyway, angels obviously fascinate a lot of people, and just a cursory look at Henley's website reveals how much they interest her. She has an engaging writing style and writes a good fantasy. I'm almost certain I would have really liked Eye of the Sword if the angels had been another race, aliens, or something besides "angels." That said, angels are so popular, I would imagine they helped the book sell.

So! What you think about fantasy portrayals of Biblical things like angels? I'll review the book tomorrow.

Here are the other blog tour participants:

Thomas Fletcher Booher
Keanan Brand
Beckie Burnham
Jackie Castle
Brenda Castro
Jeff Chapman
Christine
Theresa Dunlap
Cynthia Dyer
Victor Gentile
Ryan Heart
Janeen Ippolito
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Emileigh Latham
Rebekah Loper
Shannon McDermott
Karen McSpadden
Meagan @ Blooming with Books
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Anna Mittower
Mirriam Neal
Nissa
Faye Oygard
Nathan Reimer
Chawna Schroeder
Kathleen Smith
Donna Swanson
Jessica Thomas
Steve Trower
Shane Werlinger
Phyllis Wheeler

(I received a copy of this book free from the publisher in exchange for a review.)

Saturday, August 4, 2012

Cotswold Cottage at Greenfield Village

Julie here. Cotswold Cottage is a limestone house from 1620s England, transported to Greenfield Village (part of the Henry Ford Museum) in Michigan.





It's rather uncomfortable and stark inside, but I imagine only a fairly wealthy person in Kinyn would live here. Unless they were near a quarry or something!



Close on one of the windows. 1806!

Even the shingles were interesting.







Here is another page on Cotswold Cottage.