Two Tickets to the Christmas Ball by Donita K. Paul

Another review from Julie! So I have (or at least had) this uncanny knack of winning prizes in Internet contests, especially when it comes to books. I won a copy of Two Tickets to the Christmas Ball by Donita K. Paul (perhaps better known for her DragonKeeper series).

Oh, and at this moment (December 29, 2012) the book is listed at 99 cents at Christianbook.com!

Book (or Novella): Two Tickets to the Christmas Ball by Donita K. Paul

Ridiculously simplified summary: A practical office worker and her boss' boss both get magical tickets to a Wizard's Ball. Is God drawing them together?

Content: Heavily Christian, but with a bit of speculative/fairytale content. No sex or violence (in fact, male lead Simon is conservative enough to raise my eyebrows a few times).

I enjoyed the speculative content, but folks who are offended by Harry Potter being a wizard--very few of whom are probably reading this blog--should probably avoid this book. Paul again makes a point of so-called "wizards" not actually being the sorcerers spoken of in the Bible. Some of the more magical characters note that if faeries exist, then they came to Bethlehem to see baby Jesus, and says that some people have deathbed conversions that we don't see. I do believe God can do anything, but some of the items brought over as fact don't feel completely like good theology to me. (And there is a substantial amount of Christian discussion, though I'm not sure how necessary most of it is to the book.)

Rating:

Compelling: 8 out of 10. The magical parts of the world are really what drew me in. The main characters spend a fair amount of time along the shops of old-fashioned Sage Street, which doesn't seem to always be there. The shops, and their patrons, were fantastical and compelling, all just on the edge of being impossible. A realist could probably see everything as technically being possible in the real world, though magic is by far the most likely option (and as much as stated closer to the end). To me, Sage Street felt like a cross between Disney and Diagon Alley in Harry Potter.

Characters: 7 out of 10. Cora and Simon, the leads, are rather ordinary, practical people, and they came to life for me at the beginning as strikingly realistic. Simon seemed charming, and I could totally believe Cora as a character. Cora's relentless planning for Christmas gifts was adorable. When it came down to the nuts and bolts of falling in love and such, I don't know what happened, but I found them somehow a bit less interesting, I guess because they had relatively restrained passion. I don't read contemporary romance, though; I prefer historical, and preferably suspenseful, stories. Simon's sister Sandy was a dear; the shopkeepers in Sage Street were entertaining. None of the other characters stood out for me. Cora's sister was almost unbelievably wicked (I know real people like that do exist, granted, but she surprised me in this story).

Writing/editing: 8 out of 10. I didn't notice any typos or anything of the like. The descriptions of fantastical places were fun and to me, the writing never got in the way of the story. To me, that's a compliment.

Plausibility/believability: 3 out of 5. I got a great sense of Sage Street but a just OK sense of the office. A woman dating her boss' boss...I feel like Cora would have to quit her job, but that was just glossed over. A lot of the Christian talk felt either over-the-top to me, or else shoehorned in, though that's a challenge for romances where both characters are already Christians. And some of the morality surprised me...Simon doesn't watch television, for instance, presumably because of the lax morals.  That's not impossible by any means, but I'd say it puts him in the outside 0.01% of 30-somethings.

Positive: 4 out of 5. I enjoyed the beginning especially, and the climactic resolution at the ending was sweet.

Gut reaction: 3 out of 5. A sweet read, though I felt some loose ends were left untied (Cora's sister, for instance). Perhaps intentionally, or perhaps to leave the reader "wanting more."

Bonus points: 5 out of 5.

Recommended for: Fans of Christian romance with a bit of fantasy.

Not a good fit for: Christians who are wary of anything containing the word "wizard"

Total Rating: 3.8 out of 5 stars

*I received this book free in a giveaway

Review - Surrender the Dawn by MaryLu Tyndall

Another review by Julie!

Book: Surrender the Dawn by MaryLu Tyndall

Ridiculously simplified summary: War of 1812, Baltimore. Luke Heaton, captain of a rather sorry sailing ship, spends his spare time gambling and drinking, sure he is a failure and just as sure that God doesn't exist. Until the beautiful Cassandra desperately invests her family's livelihood with Luke, trusting him to attack the British as a privateer and split the spoils with her and his crew. Can the charming town rogue succeed in saving Cassandra and her family from certain poverty? Or will Cassandra be forced to marry another to feed her family?

Content: I don't recall anything that would be considered offensive, though it raises the question about God allowing evil in the world. At the start, Cassandra completely distrusts God, while Luke doesn't even believe God exists. It's an interesting dynamic (usually there's at most one unbeliever in the relationship, and the believer helps lead the unbeliever). Though I think that actually hindered the romance a bit, since the characters were drawn to each other, never mind if they knew God or not, and also the climax was more about them coming to trust God rather than being together. Supernatural visions abound for one character, which seems to be normal for Tyndall.

Rating:

Compelling: 8 out of 10. Tyndall is good at writing adventure stories, and pretty much knows how to raise the stakes and keep you reading. I thought the hero and heroine's separation for the last large portion of the book actually made the story a bit less compelling. Granted, it's very hard to keep a "proper" woman and man together when the man is a sailor and spends much of the novel on the water, but I'd expected something different. The ending fell flat for me because of this.

Characters: 7 out of 10. Luke was charming, as to be expected (on paper, no-good men trying to go straight, are almost always charming). When we were in his head early on, I felt like almost every page he was fixated on what a failure he was, which was a bit annoying to me. Cassandra was fairly likable, especially in her pigheadedness to do the stupid thing that starts the book along (invest the family savings with the town rogue). Unfortunately, she does several other very stupid things later on that serve as the reason things go wrong, advancing the story. I just wanted to shake her for her numerous bad decisions.

There were some good supporting characters. I felt like some of the bad guys were fairly one-dimensional (for instance, the newspaper man wants Cassandra for no reason I can fathom...a bit like Gaston hunting Belle, it was completely unreasonable to pursue the one woman in town who wants nothing to do with you).

Writing/editing: 8 out of 10. Few typos that I saw. One strange thing is that Cassandra's hair is burgundy throughout most of the book (which is a lovely color for dyed hair, though not one I've personally seen in nature). It made her unusual. But nearer to the end, it's consistently auburn.

Plausibility/believability: 4 out of 5. The actual details about shipboard life felt real and I got at least some sense of historical Baltimore. Francis Scott Key's cameo felt a bit much for me, but I'm sure others loved it.

Positive: 4 out of 5. The characters end the book completely satisfied as to why God evidently doesn't just let bad things happen to us, but providentially causes them. I've never had any trouble believing God takes care of everything in my own life, but I still have some questions as to when bad things happen to other people, and I didn't personally feel satisfied by the explanations here.

Gut reaction: 2 out of 5. Great beginning and good middle, but the climactic end let me down as far as the romance was concerned.

Bonus points: 5 out of 5.

Total Rating: 3.8 out of 5 stars

*I received this book free in a giveaway.

Review: Angel in the Saloon (The Brides of Glory Gulch) by Jeanne Marie Leach

Another review by Julie!

Book: Angel in the Saloon by Jeanne Marie Leach

Ridiculously simplified summary: Amelia, pious young woman, recently orphaned, and blind, comes to an Glory Gulch, an 1880s Old West town, to live with her only relative, her aunt Corrin, keeper of the town's saloon. Her aunt's old flames both take a liking to her….

Content: More violence than I expected, and at least one icky line about bodily functions ("The small chamber pot was not going to be a useful tool in this situation...").

As far as the Christianity, I didn't see anything to object to, but it definitely felt like an indie book for at least a couple reasons. First, the heroine is being wooed by two men roughly twice her age (certainly the right age to date her deceased mother!). That didn't seem like something I'd see in the mainstream market. And at one point the book criticizes Christians who conform to the rules to the point of going too far--something I feel might not be in many mainstream Christian books, for fear of offending. (Never mind that the heroine lives in a saloon!)

Rating:

Compelling: 6 out of 10. There were some slow points and some portions that were narrated when they could've been handled by a brief scene or a brief sentence. But overall it wasn't difficult to get through. Parts of the story cross the line into melodrama, though for a Western that's perhaps not entirely inappropriate.

Characters: 4 out of 10. Amelia, the blind heroine, was basically perfect in every way except for her inability to see. Perfectly beautiful, perfect at playing the piano, perfectly gentle and kind, superhumanly forgiving, only very rarely becoming angry, and so forth. Other characters call her "Angel." It wasn't much fun to read about her. Her beaus were such good friends to each other that I sometimes had a bit of trouble differentiating between them, though I'm not certain what could have been done differently.

The book starts out from the point of view Amelia's aunt, Corrin, a woman spurned, old maid, now owner of a "decent" saloon. I wish that would've continued. She is a much more interesting character, and I would have honestly preferred the book to be about her. Though she must be in her 40s, I'd consider reading a romance about her if it started where this book leaves off. Or just a regular book about her. Though this is first in the "Brides of Glory Gulch" series, it doesn't appear that Leach has written about her again, unless she's just a recurring character.

Writing/editing: 5 out of 10. Quite a few typos--nothing catastrophic, but occasionally distracting. (As an example, early on, a character--who I don't believe has an odd accent--says "But you haven't told us much abort yourself, Miss Jackson.")

Plausibility/believability: 3 out of 5. I never felt really transported to the Old West, per se; more like a movie Western. (That said, writing a romance with the historical setting as window dressing is a perfectly acceptable option.)

I felt like they said Corrin had the only saloon--did I read that wrong?--but most Old West towns had numerous saloons, as far as I know. Corrin ran hers without vices (no loose women, etc.). I can't imagine why another, more accommodating, saloon wouldn't have sprung up. Interestingly, Corrin's closest friends are two men who evidently don't want anything from her but friendship.

Overall I mostly "bought" Amelia as blind--it was handled fairly well early on--but occasionally portions in her point of view would mention something she couldn't see. At one point Amelia goes to the outhouse because she's feeling a bout of "dysentery" coming on, but seems none the worse for wear after another incident occurs outside the outhouse.

Positive: 4 out of 5. Everyone comes to Jesus, which is nice enough, but one character tells his friend who decided he was ready to commit his life to God, "Come and see me in a couple weeks. We'll talk and pray." which shocked me. A lot can happen in 2 weeks, especially in a world where most the main characters were gravely injured at some point during the novel.

Gut reaction: 2 out of 5. There were some good ideas here. Amelia could've been a great catalyst for other people's lives, but she wasn't the type of person I really want to read about at length, especially when the book started with a character I found much more interesting.

Bonus points: 5 out of 5.


Total Rating: 2.9 out of 5 stars



*I downloaded this book for free from Amazon.

CSFF Blog Tour - The Spirit Well and Superpowers

Julie one more time for the CSFF blog tour (reviewing The Spirit Well by Stephen Lawhead).

I was a bit surprised to see the a near-universal positive reaction to the book's Zetetic Society! Shannon McDermott's post pretty much explains why I found them worrisome (yet I was able to see them through rose-coloured glasses, so to speak, and loved the idea of them...the same reason I fell in love with the film Captain EO.)

Onward. This week I was just struck by the amazing powers we have in the year 2012. Can we time-travel? Well, OK, only forwards, and at the rate of one minute a minute at that. (Though there are some re-enactments and such that are pretty cool, never mind movies that at least try to transport us backwards or forwards in time.)

Can we teleport? Well, no, but again with the airplanes (and Internet technologies allowing you to virtually visit people and places everywhere). Never mind that superpowers often come with a cost...right now the cost to physically transport is several hours of discomfort and also some money to go almost anywhere in the world.

Can we communicate telepathically? Well, no, though the more I think about it, the more horrifying mind-speaking seems. How do you block someone from reading your mind, or from talking into yours? Do you really want to hear what those drivers are thinking about you on the freeway? What if they're all thinking at you at the same time?

Even a casual viewing of a commercial for NBC's "Revolution" reminds us that people today have amazing superpowers compared to people throughout pretty much any other point in history to date. It used to take at least a couple weeks to get a letter across the US and even longer to get one across the ocean. Now if my mom texts me and doesn't hear back for 2 hours, she's as likely as not to think I'm dead in a gutter. If I want to read a newspaper from Arizona in 1910, I don't even have to get up off the couch.

What do we do with these superpowers? If you're like me, you hang out on Facebook and read everything that catches your eye. Do I consciously use these superpowers for good? Well, not so much.

Squandering one's life on the Internet is bad enough. But even worse than playing games, reading messageboards, and watching videos...well, let's ignore the most carnal vices on the Internet and stick to harm individuals do to others. Many ordinary people use the Internet--often anonymously--to be mean to people they know, or even strangers. You can hardly look at any popular video on YouTube without seeing a senselessly mean comment. Not reasoned-out or constructive criticism (I know my reviews are not the kindest, but I try to be fair). But people post the equivalent of drive-by verbal assaults. How sad is that? I guess superpowers sometimes breed supervillains. I hope and pray I don't do anything like that.

So...how can a would-be superhero use the Internet to fight against those who cut down and destroy others? That's a big question and I don't actually have the answer.

Do you?

Thanks for the tour, everyone!

CSFF Blog Tour - The Bright Empires series - The Spirit Well by Stephen R. Lawhead

Julie again, for the CSFF Blog Tour!

Book: The Spirit Well by Stephen Lawhead (Facebook).

Ridiculously simplified summary: 3rd in a series. Several explorers, good and bad, manipulate "ley lines" of energy to travel through space and time. All seek the Skin Map, which outlines these leys, and could even guide a traveler to the Fountain of Youth. Meanwhile, a new face stumbles onto a ley line. Will she embark on the adventure thrust before her?

Content: Characters are still seeking a human-skin map. There's a rather graphic scene of a Egyptian medical procedure fairly early on, and more violence at the end.

Regarding Christianity, it comes into play a lot more, though parts of it seem a bit universalist to me. A major character (new to this book) is called upon to follow what is good and she believes God exists, so that's good, but thus far there was little reference to Christianity. One character, an ex-atheist, notes "so much religious dogma serves only to buttress power and befuddle the masses, it really deserves to be ridiculed. I mean, you hear the so-called revivalists banging on about heaven and hell and what not--do any of them really know about such things? They claim to know what God wants and what he demands...Bosh! ... Anyone who tells you he knows the mind of God is selling something. You can take that to the bank." This same basic group of characters notes a strange rule I've never heard of before, that demons/dark forces can't hear you converse if you're inside a church. (Which makes me wonder why everyone doesn't have all their meetings in churches.) Some good notes on prayer as well, and some other neat ideas I won't spoil here, though again, not necessarily specific as to Christianity proper.

This book touches on the idea of using time-travel to potentially change the past (something which seemed forbidden in The Bone House). It appears each person can perhaps only inhabit one dimension at a time...by that measure, maybe every person in existence is really only one person (not several different versions), which makes the eternal/salvation implications more plausible.

Rating:

Compelling: 9 out of 10. Honestly, I don't feel like much progress has been made on the macro-end of things, given that none of the heroes knows how to read the piece of Skin Map they acquired, and the titular item only appears through a character telling his story, if I recall correctly. But this book somehow made me want to continue reading. A new character comes up to join our heroes and while I didn't find her to be anything special, I was fascinated by the group she stumbles upon.

My main problem is that I still don't care for some of the characters and have absolutely no interest in their storylines. There are numerous threads to the story, and there are some I just don't care about.

Characters: 6 out of 10. I liked some of the characters, but I didn't feel like the newcomer, Cass, was markedly different from any other characters. However, she served as a bit of a cypher for me once she makes the leap--a character I can observe and project my experiences onto.

I feel like the characters kind of start to bleed together, and as I mentioned before, I feel distanced from them. Some of the descriptions were rather lacking, too...I am still trying to figure out where Brendan is described as being older, until the word "fatherly" is used near the end (though it was implied by the context of his companions earlier). I'd imagined him as handsome and not terribly old from the initial description of "a tall, thin man in a three-piece suit of pale cream linen topped off with a natty white panama hat."

But that said, the book can work without all the characters being compelling.

Writing/editing: 6 out of 10. Readers probably won't notice, but I feel like editing got notably sloppy in the second half or so. The story turns into a fair sea of adverbs and unnecessarily-fancy dialogue tags. On page 243, in the span of 4 paragraphs, we have "he replied pleasantly," "he observed mildly," and "replied Cass lamely." Page 327 uses dialogue tags of "(character) allowed with a shrug," "concluded (character)," and "(character) agreed." Writing teachers and critiquers alike drill it into writers' heads that you should simply tag dialogue with "said" or an action tag. (As in, instead of "he allowed with a shrug," just say "he shrugged.")

In fairness, there are similar tag issues even at the start...it may feel more pronounced near the end because there are a lot of lengthy conversations with no action going on. As a writer, I know tagging dialogue is not always easy. It's just something I expect a publishing house's editor to pick up on. Unless, of course, Lawhead has reached that unfortunate point of popularity where publishers just want to get the work out as quickly as possible and no longer really edit.

Plausibility/believability: 5 out of 5. I'm from Arizona, and the portrayal of Sedona felt like Arizona all over. (Except I think Cass is silly if she wore a headscarf instead of a hat to shield herself from the sun.) I "saw" London (two time periods!), Damascus, and monasteries. Descriptions of places got rather more attention than people, I felt, but that actually meshes all right with my personality.

Positive: 5 out of 5. Some rather graphic evil at the end, but I'm still so fascinated by some of the ideas, I can't help but find it positive. (Also, if you can travel through time, maybe evil can be undone?)

Gut reaction: 5 out of 5. I'll admit this is mostly just me projecting my own ideas onto the book, but some people say that's an important part of the reading process.

When Cass meets the Zetetic Society they appear to be a bunch of loons, and I'm still not sure that they're completely sane, but I was so caught up in the idea of a club of seasoned travelers trying to do good. How amazing would that be? I'm projecting, but it makes me want to go off on an adventure, gamble it all, or at least use my powers for good. A series about these travelers--as opposed to the inadvertent wanderers grasping about for a Skin Map--could be a more fun world to visit than anything at Hogwarts.

Unlike when I finished The Bone House, I'd consider seeking out the next book in the series.

Bonus points: 5 out of 5.


Total Rating: 4.1 out of 5 stars



Here are the other blog tour participants:

Jim Armstrong
Julie Bihn
Red Bissell
Jennifer Bogart
Thomas Clayton Booher
Thomas Fletcher Booher
Beckie Burnham
Brenda Castro
Jeff Chapman
Christine
Karri Compton
Theresa Dunlap
Emmalyn Edwards
April Erwin
Victor Gentile
Jeremy Harder
Bruce Hennigan
Timothy Hicks
Janeen Ippolito
Becca Johnson
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Emileigh Latham
Rebekah Loper
Shannon McDermott
Meagan @ Blooming with Books
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Anna Mittower
Joan Nienhuis
Lyn Perry
Nathan Reimer
Chawna Schroeder
Rachel Starr Thomson
Robert Treskillard
Steve Trower
Dona Watson
Shane Werlinger
Phyllis Wheeler




*In conjunction with the CSFF blog tour, I received a free review copy of this book from the publisher.

CSFF Blog Tour - The Bright Empires series - The Bone House by Stephen R. Lawhead

The CSFF Blog Tour this month is on The Spirit Well by Stephen R. Lawhead (Facebook). I've been fascinated by time travel ever since I saw Back to the Future 2, so I was quite interested to read this book.

Our intrepid tour guide, Rebecca Luella Miller, suggested we should read the first two books in the series to get a handle on the third one. I checked my local library listings and they showed both books were there. So I stopped off there, only to find the first book was missing! The second had a summary though, so I decided to dive in there, for better or for worse.

In fairness, Inspired Reads recently promoted a Kindle sale on The Bone House, book 2 in the Bright Empires series, so I'd wager the publisher thinks that book is enough to draw a reader into the series.

Is it?

Book: The Bone House by Stephen Lawhead

Ridiculously simplified summary: 2nd in a series. Several explorers, good and bad, manipulate "ley lines" of energy to travel through space and time. All seek the Skin Map, which outlines these leys, and could even guide a traveler to the Fountain of Youth...

Content: Aside from the characters seeking a map made out of a man's skin (which is gross enough) and a rather violent fight at the end, I don't recall anything gruesome here. The titular bone house is, if I recall correctly, made out of only animal bones. There is a lot of vomiting (part of the effects of ley travel) and I was surprised not only that a character soiled himself at one point, but the amount of time (read: any) devoted to the character dealing with this. I found the book rather light on the Christian themes; they were only subtly present, in my opinion.

The idea of other worlds and potentially parallel versions of ourselves is a bizarre one that can be hard to square with Christianity, just like time travel. I have a feeling I'll have more to say about that with the next book.

Rating:

Compelling: 7 out of 10. At the beginning I was immediately drawn in for the journey, not knowing where the characters are going or what the point of the adventures is. Since I came in on Book 2, the concept of ley travel was fascinating and the style fun to read, so at first I didn't even care that I couldn't follow why things were happening. It was about halfway through that I started to wonder if there really was a plan here. Obviously there is, but I felt like the journey to get to an unresolved destination was overly complicated, even for a book with numerous realities.

Lawhead has that British voice that I as an American writer can only envy. He can get away with quite a bit of head-hopping by being an omniscient narrator. The charm of that started to wear off for me as the book progressed, until I got to where I was noticing just how distanced we are from the characters themselves. (And I'm a natural observer, not a feeler, so I really don't mind observing, but this was notably distant.)

I found the whole ending of Kit's arc dull. Near the ending is one of those scenes where he has an epiphany/transforming experience, but I didn't feel anchored enough to him and didn't feel like I was feeling what he was. Instead of being riveted, I felt like skimming.

Characters: 7 out of 10. This is rather tricky for me in that I really loved a couple characters (Wilhelmina and Etzel) and liked a couple others (Haven and Turms). But most of the others I found flat. As I mentioned above, Lawhead really doesn't get into any one character's head much, and just glancing through I counted at least four or five point-of-view characters in the first 10 chapters. I'd wager there are more actually, given that mid-chapter, or even mid-page, the point-of-view character shifts. Readers often don't mind these shifts, granted, but they tend to drive writers and editors up the wall.

Compounding the problem is that Lawhead, either referencing Book 1 (which I didn't read) or else trying to be funny, describes Wilhelmina as Kit's "unpleasant girlfriend." So when I found Wilhelmina to be fascinating and likable, that made me distrust/dislike the narrator.

That said, Lawhead the author proves himself by writing some of the more interesting female characters I've seen in Christian fiction.

Writing/editing: 8 out of 10. I explained the point-of-view/narrator issues above. Otherwise I felt like the editing got a bit sloppier at the end, but I only recall one typo.

Plausibility/believability: 4 out of 5. Ley travel felt real, and real life doesn't always tie up neat and pretty, so the disjointedness of the storyline didn't seem unrealistic. My main quibble on this front is that I can't believe cavemen were telepathic. Yes, I can believe these characters travel through space and time through lines of energy, but telepathic cavemen? That is where I draw the line. (Don't judge me. We all have those arbitrary lines of what we find plausible.)

Positive: 4 out of 5. I didn't feel worse after reading this book. While the world isn't all happy, I didn't find anything overly depressing.

Gut reaction: 4 out of 5. I found The Bone House fairly enjoyable, though it felt a bit muddled. (Reading Book 1 may or may not have helped that.) I thought the ending was a bit weak, so I'm not certain I would have read Book 3 if I hadn't had a review copy staring me in the face. On the other hand, I don't at all regret I had said review copy waiting for me.

Bonus points: 5 out of 5.

Recommended for:  Fans of "clean" time-travel fiction, Christian and not, who don't need to get close into each character's head.

Total Rating: 3.9 out of 5 stars



Here are the other blog tour participants:

Jim Armstrong
Julie Bihn
Red Bissell
Jennifer Bogart
Thomas Clayton Booher
Thomas Fletcher Booher
Beckie Burnham
Brenda Castro
Jeff Chapman
Christine
Karri Compton
Theresa Dunlap
Emmalyn Edwards
April Erwin
Victor Gentile
Jeremy Harder
Bruce Hennigan
Timothy Hicks
Janeen Ippolito
Becca Johnson
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Emileigh Latham
Rebekah Loper
Shannon McDermott
Meagan @ Blooming with Books
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Anna Mittower
Joan Nienhuis
Lyn Perry
Nathan Reimer
Chawna Schroeder
Rachel Starr Thomson
Robert Treskillard
Steve Trower
Dona Watson
Shane Werlinger
Phyllis Wheeler




*I checked out this book free from my local library.

Avast!

Arr  Be enjoyin' Talk Like a Pirate Day, mateys!